Work in Progress
by Covenmouse
Summary: Life might not be anything but a fat rat race, but even rats need a vacation every now and then... so how far do you have to go to get a little time off? 2x5x2, 3x4x3, 1xR
1. In which there might be clowns

++// Welcome to the newly beta'd version of Work in Progress! Much thanks to Loki for helping me clean this up. \\++

**Chapter One**  
_** In which there might be clowns…**_

Looking at the pile of papers in his "out" box, a neat white stack that towered over the black boundaries of the box, Wufei realized that he was _finally_ done. His head hurt, his eyes were sore, and the fingers of both hands were cramped. The boy took off his glasses with a sigh and rubbed slow circles on each side of the bridge of his nose. He set the thin wire frames down on the desktop in front of him and slowly let himself setting back into the creaking, generally uncomfortable chair that he'd been spending Monday through Friday (and the occasional Saturday) in for quite nearly a year now. He loosened his tie a little and peeked his eyes open at the black screen of his desktop terminal. A single movement of his hand knocked against the computer mouse on his desk and 'woke' the monitor. The clock told him that it was exactly two minutes until five, which meant that it would only be moments until his worthless excuse of a "partner" showed up.

Wufei shot a murderous glare towards the stack of papers upon his desk, as if by will alone they would burst into flames. It wasn't the paperwork's fault that he was stuck doing it of course, and so the stack sat there, mockingly snow white and pristine. At least they finally had procured a "file boy" who would come by once the office had emptied a little and take all the paperwork where it belonged. He didn't envy that kid his job—but Wufei also understood it was a part of the intern's duties.

Leaning back a little further in his seat and ignoring the protest of the chair Wufei looked through the open "door" space in his left cubicle wall so that he could see into the corridor beyond. He had been given a cubicle directly by one of the windows that ran along the outside wall, butted into the far back-left corner of the spacious room that the field agents shared when they were in the office. He'd have never thought that a field agent would be stuck in an office as much as he was… but there was just far more paper work to do than there were assignments which needed a personal touch. And, he noted somewhat bitterly, there just weren't enough agents to handle the legal tape that the Preventers were hedged in with.

Most of a year had gone by before the world had begun to settle into the new Alliance. There had still been some protestors, mostly among those who had never once raised a hand in the war but now felt it safe to state their opinions, whom had had to be dealt with peacefully and politely. After that had come the political war, with politicians from all over the globe and the colonies jostling for position within the new order. Some had been ousted, some had been glorified, and some were cast into the gutter. Others still had even been assassinated. It was the last which had fully underscored the need for a group such as the Preventers. While they technically weren't an army in and of themselves, they were the closest thing which the Alliance would allow to there being one. Which was how it should be, he supposed.

It had taken the Chinese boy a long to admit that he'd had a hard time settling into this new order as well. He was a soldier, a warrior: what place had he in an era of peace when his first instinct was to strike at whatever gave him problems? When Lady Une had found him, lost and hopeless and searching for something to do, she had offered him hope. Where would all the soldiers go? They would come here.

True, Wufei wasn't allowed to use a firearm for any reason other than in strict, dire situations, and, true, he did not have as much freedom in his path as he'd once had as a Gundam Pilot. This didn't bother him as much as he'd thought it might. Shortly after beginning work here, nine months ago, he'd found himself settling with ease into the routine of things. Every so often he would be sent across the globe or into one of the colonies in order to root up some information or take in a bad guy, but for the most part he spent his life as a nine-to-five office man. He was even beginning to like living on the Earth.

As the clock hung over the door across the room struck five, heads began to sprout like daisies above the cubicle walls. Wufei didn't move. He watched as his fellow Preventers collected their properties and began to make their way for the office door. They were laughing and talking amongst themselves, possibly even making plans for the weekend; the Chinese boy didn't even know half their names. All were faces that he felt familiar enough with and it wasn't merely for the fact that they'd been sharing an office for several months. No, many of these faces he was certain he'd seen at one point or another during the war—an Oz soldier here, a White Fang member there… possibly even a Federation soldier once or twice, or a guerilla terrorist. He wasn't the only person to have sought refuge in the white-washed, yellow-taped organization which housed the only military-style existence left in their known world, and somehow that made Wufei feel a lot better about himself.

Now if only one person had been left out of this…

"Hey, 'Fei!" Duo Maxwell had crept up to him in the blind-spot offered by the right wall of his cubicle and was now leaning over the corner of the flimsy wall-structure to grin down at its occupant. Wufei tried not to twitch at the "nickname" he'd been assigned within a week of having known the other boy. Well, no, that wasn't quite fair. Technically, he'd known Duo a lot longer—it had already been over a year since they'd met on one of the beginning battlefields on Earth when the boy had been re-introduced to him by Lady Une as his new work partner. Just thinking about that day made Wufei long for a punching bag. "You ready or what?"

When he'd first joined the Preventers they'd only been a month into operation. Things were rocky back then; there'd only been five of them, Une included, and it had taken quite a lot of speeches (known in more uncouth circles as "bitch fests") from her, Ex-Lieutenant Noin and the new Vice Foreign Minister Darlian before the funding for the Preventers had moved out of Darlian's pocketbook and into government paychecks. That had allowed them to hire many more hands, secretaries, rent office space and eventually find a place to actually train their agents. In those days none of them had had "official" partners—you went with whoever was available for the mission, or you went alone. Most of the time you went alone.

The good old days were over. Two months ago, Lady Une—or, as she was known now, "Director General Une"—had informed them that the days of solo missions were over. Not that he blamed her entirely; many of the agents that they had working for them were morons. They'd been hired before they could be properly trained and the soldiers of the various organizations that had been in place during the last war weren't used to running solo operations. Because of this there had been quite a few "accidents" in the field, especially during the transitional period when they'd been busy trying to track down pockets of rebellion and fleeing assassins. Yet Wufei couldn't help but feel that certain exceptions should have been made.

Before Maxwell could get antsy, Wufei surged from his chair to his feet and pulled his jacket from the peg that held it on the wall in the same fluid motion. He threw the coat around his shoulders, arms sliding easily into the warm leather sleeves. At least they'd gotten better, and more protective, uniforms from what they'd been wearing in the beginning. Without a word Wufei retrieved his reading glasses from the desk and put them into their hard case that he then slipped into his pocket.

"Maxwell." Wufei dropped the other boy's name like a statement as he spared him the first look he'd given him that afternoon. To his credit the braided boy didn't even flinch at the fire Wufei was purposely attempting to throw into his expression. Wufei knew that it was there, he'd practiced this look a hundred times in the mirror to make certain that he was getting his point across, and yet Duo never seemed to mind it. He just continued to smile that idiot smile of his.

Wufei pointed at the stack of innocently stacked documents in his out-box, "This is called paperwork."

"Yes, typically."

"You're supposed to do it."

"It seems you've beaten me to the punch there, buddy boy."

Wufei's left eye twitched. Once. Twice. Three times it twitched. Wufei's eye had never twitched before he'd met Duo. No, the boy corrected himself once again, once he'd become re-acquainted with Duo. The difference that proximity to the braided ex-pilot made was astounding. "When I arrived this morning there was a stack of papers half this size on the desk in your cubicle," he tried to keep his voice as even as possible, "yet when I returned with my morning coffee there were no papers on your desk."

By this time the office had emptied, save the poor bedraggled head of Jake The File Boy (it had taken Wufei three weeks to remember his name) who was going around picking up and sorting out the files for the various agents. At the sound of their voices, Jake The File Boy raised his head and then promptly ducked it again upon seeing the expression on the Wufei's face. Duo remained unperturbed at this and simply tilted his head to one side of his broadened shoulders. "I seem to remember something about that, yeah."

"Do you remember how and why your stack of paperwork chose to migrate to my in-box?" Wufei asked with the silkiest of tones that he could manage.

"That… would be a secret." Duo stuck his tongue out at him, winking, and flashed the boy a peace sign. Unable to help himself, Wufei growled, teeth grinding slightly in frustration. He couldn't hit Duo, no matter how much he would want to. Hands forming into fists, Wufei fought to keep them at his sides as he glared murder at his ever-cheerful partner. It would be severely dishonorable, not to mention illegal, for him to assault Duo in any place other than the sparing ring that had been set up in their training facility. Much to his annoyance, Wufei had yet to talk Duo into meeting him on that "battlefield."

Finally, it seemed to break through to the braided man that Wufei was angry about the entire thing. Duo gave a faint sigh, bottom lip jutting out in a pout which would have made any woman weak in the knees. There was little denying that even after a growth spurt and a seemingly late-arrived puberty that Duo Maxwell was a _beautiful_ man-child. The baby fat on his cheeks had finally begun to slim down and there was the faintest red-brown trace of a three-o'clock shadow along his jaw now that the day was almost half over. Though they'd been similar in height a year ago, Duo now stood at least three inches taller than him and more was likely to be added to that. That feat was all the more amazing when Wufei took into account that he'd managed to spring up a measly three inches himself, bringing Duo's total up to six. Genetics told Wufei that he wasn't liable to get much taller than this or, were luck to fail him completely, he'd stay this short for the rest of his life.

That pair of large baby blue eyes half-hidden under Duo's wild tangle of bangs were as sparkling and vibrant as ever; there were no few people who had merely handed Duo the information he'd been after once encountered with those eyes. The first time Wufei had witnessed this he'd been too shocked to register it properly, and the time after that it had become funny… but by the time that they were on the fifth or sixth instance of this (Wufei had begun to lose count) it had just become sad. Had humanity sunk so low that no one could resist the "puppy dog" eyes of a seventeen-year-old boy? Wufei was determined that he wouldn't give in.

"Ah come on, 'Fei. I had other shit to do and you're better than I am at this mumbo-jumbo." Duo cast a sullen look down at the pile of papers. His eyes didn't rise from the damning articles, and Wufei was happy to note that the pout was also directed there. It seemed as if the braided idiot knew that it wasn't going to work on him.

"Better to do than your job?" Wufei snorted; typical.

"What? Oh, come on, man!" A frown. So, Wufei had touched a button? Duo's eyes suddenly jerked themselves away from the documents to meet Wufei's full force. "I was teaching the trainees. I've been on roster with them the past week and there's a few who need extra tutoring. The paperwork is for both of us, so I just thought—"

"Eh-e-excuse me," a soft voice spoke up from behind them. Both Duo and Wufei startled, and the taller boy turned to find Jake The File Boy was standing right behind him. The sheepish-seeming excuse for a male had his head hung and Wufei could just barely make out a pair of green eyes peeking out from under his unkempt blond mop of hair. Just looking at this kid made Wufei wonder if he really was just seventeen; according to the office birthday calendar (of which neither he nor Duo had chosen to take part in, yet were fully aware of) and coffee-pot gossip, Jake The File Boy was actually two months Wufei's elder. The boy could hardly bring himself to whisper more than ten words a day; it was a rare day when he had the courage to actually interrupt a conversation.

Apparently the boy's courage ended when he had two Preventers agents giving him their full attention. For a long moment, as the time slowly ticked by on the clock across the room, both ex-pilots merely watched as that glassy green gaze descended back towards the Jake The File Boy's unpolished and patched brown leather shoes and his loud, raspy breathing became the only sound in the room. "Can I help you?" Wufei was finally forced to ask.

One shaking hand bent its white knuckles from around the papers he was already carrying and extended a single digit towards Wufei's cubicle. "Uh…" Jake The File Boy replied helpfully.

It took Wufei a moment to register just what it was the boy was getting at and much to his surprise Duo beat him to it. "Oh!" His (unwanted) partner exclaimed and bent over the top of the cubicle wall to pick up the carefully stacked pile of outgoing paperwork. Duo handed it to Jake The File Boy and there was a terrifying moment when it seemed as if the boy was going to drop the entire load as well as what he'd already collected. Then he seemed to right himself, tucked the papers onto the back of his current stack, and shuffled away towards the file room on the other side of the office.

Both Wufei and Duo watched him go, their fight pushed to the side in lieu of the marvelous display of awkward they'd just witnessed. Then Wufei snorted, shut his computer down for the night and grabbed his keys. It was time to head home.

Ever since they'd been assigned to one another, Duo had insisted upon walking the five blocks they had in the same direction when it came time to leave. Just five blocks, Wufei kept telling himself as the braided idiot continued to ramble beside him. To be perfectly honest, Wufei had little to no idea what Duo was saying—after two months of torture, he was beginning to learn to tune out the sound of Duo's voice, no matter how close it was. If it weren't for the fact that this route was legitimately the shortest way to both their apartments Wufei might have objected. As it was, it would have been foolish to do so, and more than a little damning for their already jilted "work relationship." Still quite a bit angry over the fight they'd been having in the office, Wufei was trying to pretend that Duo didn't exist. He pulled out his cell phone and checked for messages. There was something from Sally as well as a few calls from her he'd missed. The boy doubted that it was anything important; if she'd really wanted to reach him while he was at work she would have called his work phone or else taken the time to take a quick trip to the other side of the building. He'd probably hear enough about whatever it was in the morning, anyway. There was nothing else, but he'd hadn't been expecting anything, either.

Just then, his idiot partner grabbed his shoulder and pointed at something to Wufei's left. It was hard to miss the pointing, really, what with Duo's finger being shoved underneath his nose. Wufei tried hard not to roll his eyes as he turned towards the poster Duo was currently indicating. "… Barton."

"I had no idea their circus was coming back to Earth!"

"Well it is," Wufei said with a shrug of his shoulders. All in all, that didn't seem terribly important to him, but his partner was certainly excited. Looking back up at Duo, Wufei was very aware of the slow, creeping horror settling into his bones. Somehow he knew exactly where that maniacal grin was going. He didn't have to wait long.

"We should go see it."

"No."

Clearly that was not the reaction which Duo had expected. The boy's grin wavered and then faded, his face contorting into equal amounts of disappointment and curiosity. It was truly amazing how much of an open book Duo was; Wufei had to admit that the boy was an incredibly wonderful subject for people watching. It took little more than a glance to know how he was feeling about something or to realize that there was an exceedingly low amount of thought going on behind those pretty blue eyes. "Ah, c'mon, 'Fei."

"No." Not inclined to argue about it, Wufei turned from the boy and continued his way down the street. He stopped at the corner where they had to wait for traffic before crossing the street. The braided idiot caught up to him soon enough, stopping to his left and not looking down at him. At least Duo had dropped this subject faster than he had others in the past. For the life of him, the Chinese boy didn't even understand why Duo would care to go see the circus Trowa Barton performed in anyway.

After crossing the next street their paths split in silence. Wufei turned left and Duo continued on down the street in a strange silence.

Home was a tiny apartment over a noodle shop in the "Asian district" of the city. It smelled constantly of food, often had steam leaking through the floorboards, the walls were thin and the rooms cramped… but it was home and, more importantly, it was _his_. Wufei closed the door on the noise of the shop below, though the thin wood did little to muffle it, and hung his jacket up on the peg beside the door. His shoes went below it and then he crossed into his hole of a kitchen to set water to boil for tea.

When the beaten bronze kettle was settled above the flame of his gas stove, he turned to slide open the window above the sink. It was built in something resembling a Chinese fashion, though it wasn't entirely accurate—like most things in this part of town. Rather than a widow pane covering it, the shutter was entirely wooden and slid to the side to reveal a bare hole in the wall. He leaned his head out, arms resting upon the sill, and looked past the dangling red banners that hung from the extended rafters to the busy street below.

Compared to the business district where he worked, the Asian district was like living in a different world all together. Most of the people who lived in this area, himself included, used bikes, vespas, or their own two feet for transportation, and for good reason. Hardly any cars ever came down here, for the roads were so crowded with people that the cops had long since given up on keeping them to the sidewalks. Though the speed limit was thirty miles an hour, like any other street in the city, cars were forced to crawl at five or ten in order to keep from hitting the people.

Almost every building was both a business and a residence; restaurants had apartments above them, like his own, people ran (illegal) laundry businesses out of their homes, there were a few herbal clinics, massage parlors, all sorts of clothing shops… no one really cared. So long as that business wasn't drug or weapon traffic Wufei wasn't about to do anything about it. These people needed their businesses to survive and they weren't hurting anyone.

And, he had to admit, as different as this place was from his own colony, there was still a certain amount of familiarity in it. The people around him spoke a lot of Chinese, though Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, and other Asian languages were also mixed in. There was something about being able to find a place where he didn't have to mentally translate everything for himself which helped to put his heart to rest. He could have stayed at the window listening to that wonderful clamor for the rest of his life…

The tea kettle would have none of that. Soon enough it screamed until Wufei turned around and took it from the stove. He poured the hot liquid into a cup and added the leaves, then covered it and set it aside to steep. The window was left open to the cold breeze from outside as he crossed the two paces it took to reach the other side of his dining room and opened the door to the bathroom. He stripped his clothes off and folded them neatly, leaving them on the floor outside of the bathroom. There really wasn't a single space to put them inside of it without them getting soaked.

Wufei stepped into the ceramic tiled cubicle and closed the door behind him. As usual, the entire place was damp from the steam and heat in the restaurant below. He turned the water on, narrowly avoiding slamming his shin against the toilet as his foot slipped a little. Not for the first time Wufei swore that he was going to get one of those "non skid" mats for the floor of the bathroom. He never remembered to do it.

Despite the general heat of his apartment, the hot water still felt good. Winter was slowly receding form the city; the snows had finally stopped but had been replaced with icy rain and impromptu sunlight. Eventually spring would take over, but for now they were stuck with the broody battle between the seasons. As such, one never knew which days would be freezing and which would be moderately warm—today it had been fairly chilled.

Just as he was working the shampoo suds out of his hair he heard the phone begin to ring from the other room. Wufei frowned, finished in a hurry and shut the water off. He grabbed one of the (slightly damp) towels from the shelf built almost at the top of the wall, quickly wrapped it around his waist and managed to catch the phone before it hung up.

"Well, well, well… This is almost worth being ignored all day." The screen of the vid-comm clearly showed the woman on the other side of it, blond and resplendent in her after-work clothing. Wufei's lip twitched at the tone; Sally's teasing had been hard to get used to at first. A smirk lilted the woman's red-painted lips and she leaned her cheek upon one hand as she gazed coolly at the half-naked agent, "You never returned my call."

"I just walked in the door, what do you want from me, woman?" Wufei replied, one dark brow arching in question. He then added, unable to help himself: "Calls. Plural."

A little laugh came from the vid-comm speaker, "Yes, call_s_. You still didn't return them. Did you check the voice mail at least?"

Wufei glanced to the side at the spot where he'd folded and stacked his pants on top of the rest of his discarded clothing; the phone in question was still in the pocket. "No, I didn't."

On her side of the line, Sally scoffed a little and shook her head. "What am I going to do with you? It might have been something important you know!"

"It wasn't," the boy replied with a smirk as he returned his attention to the woman. Wufei ran one hand through his wet hair to comb a few of the knots out, "or we wouldn't be having this conversation. What did you want, Sally?"

"I want you - or rather, _we_ want you - to come to the Circus with us tonight."

More than a little surprised at the request, and the coincidence of having been asked twice in the same day, Wufei couldn't help but pause after her request. What was it about people and circuses? "Who is 'we'?"

"Une, Noin and I,"Sally replied without hesitation. Her smile broadened just a little and Wufei knew she'd seen the roll of his eyes. He sighed, considering it. Most of his time was spent alone these days, either in the office or holed up in the library when he had free time. Tonight he'd planned on doing nothing save read through a few more chapters of _Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan_; he still had to return the borrowed novel to his neighbor down the hall. Of course, Chou Zhu wasn't expecting it back any time soon as it was a hundred chapters long…

As much as it went against his grain, Wufei nodded, "Fine. What time?"

"Eight," the blond replied promptly and sat back in her chair. "I can pick you up at seven-thirty?"

Nodding a second time, the boy suddenly felt the need to ask it, "You know that this is the circus Trowa is performing with?"

"Of course!" Sally got a good laugh at that, "Why did you think we're going?"

++//\\++

The shuttle from L4-RS01 entered the Earth's atmosphere with the usual fireworks and heat. Quatre could feel some of the heat even through the air conditioning in the shuttle, but unlike the man three rows behind him he did not consider it to be a life threatening issue. Then again, he'd likely been on and off more shuttles, mobile suits, and various other space-worthy vehicles than that fat business man had ever seen in his life. Regardless, it was annoying and Quatre couldn't help but feel the need to rub one of his temples slowly to try to relieve some of the pressure.

The laptop placed on the small, fold-out table in front of him had the current news RSS feed in a window directly in the middle of it. The boy's solemn blue eyes remained glued to that feed, despite the fact that his vision had begun to swim. This wasn't just any news that he was waiting for, but a very specific article he knew would soon be published, though he hadn't any clue who the reporter would be or the source.

"Master Quatre." A teacup appeared at Quatre's elbow. The blond looked up with a weary smile for his constant companion and assistant.

"Thank you, Rashid," the boy replied faintly and took the cup from it. One long draught was taken from the steaming liquid as his eyes immediately sought the RSS feed once again. Yet another update ticked and it wasn't the one that he was dreading.

"Perhaps it won't leak," Rashid offered helpfully as he retook his seat beside the boy. Taking a commercial flight, even one that was first class, had been something of a gamble but Quatre knew that they would attract more attention, rather than less, if he'd opted for a private shuttle. He really didn't want anyone to know that he was going to be on Earth for a few days—that was what a vacation was all about, really. Rashid had drawn the line at allowing Quatre to take coach.

"Mhm," he responded absently and tapped the touch-pad once to keep the screen saver from going up. His back ached, but no matter how hard Quatre tried to keep himself sitting upright it simply didn't happen, not today. Instead he rested his elbows on his knees as he continued to watch the feed and ignore the bellows of the man three rows back who was now arguing with one of the poor stewardesses. The news still ticked by. A new policy in Asia about chicken feed, a power plant laying off employees, a new business deal between two major corporations, a new study about the—Quatre's eyes flickered down to the business deal and he moved the cursor quickly to catch the rapidly disappearing link. The laptop thought about it for a moment and then the browser jumped to life.

He bit one thumbnail as he waited for the coding to load. The connection was always slow in the atmosphere and they were still twenty minutes from touching down. Finally the page righted itself and Quatre was able to skim the article beneath it. He groaned faintly and let his tea cup settle upon his leg.

The merger being planned with Telecorp wasn't something that was supposed to have hit the airwaves yet; in fact, it wasn't something that was even in its final stages of development yet. When he'd allowed Rashid and his sisters to talk him into taking a holiday it had been with the understanding that the deal had gone in for a revision of terms and the next meeting would be put on hold until he returned. That had remained true until he'd received a distressing phone call at four that morning informing him that one of the copies of the old contract which was supposed to have been shredded once the new draft had been made had somehow gone "missing" before his lawyer's aide had gone to shred them. It wouldn't have even been noticed except that the woman was in the habit of double checking her counts.

All of that meant that someone who wasn't supposed to had taken a copy of the contract and, in turn, had taken that information directly to the press. Just as he'd expected, "breaking news" was now informing the entire System that Winner Corp was cutting out over two hundred thousand jobs.

"Rashid," He began in a quiet tone.

"Master Quatre, this is not your fault," the man interrupted before the boy could get more than that single word out. The blond raised his head to look at the man who had been protector, brother, and second-father to him for past three years. From the scowl across Rashid's face it was obvious that the man wasn't going to be argued with, "and if you insist that it is, I will insist upon calling a limousine to pick you up at the terminal. Neither are you canceling your vacation."

The boy winced a little; he knew that Rashid would do it, too. Were he to call a limo, Quatre's little amount of cover would be effectively blown. He'd managed to keep the paparazzi unaware of his departure from the colonies and thus far it seemed as if they were entirely unaware that he was heading towards the Earth. That was a relief. This past year had been taxing, and it wasn't only because he'd had to fight tooth and nail with the board of directors over every single decision he'd been trying to make regarding the Winner Corp.

"You're doing the best you can to see that this merger doesn't drop anyone," Rashid said softly, to keep any prying ears from hearing, "They'll see that in the end."

"I hope you're right, Rashid," Quatre replied with a faint smile. He picked his tea up before he spilt it and sat back in his seat. The boy closed his eyes on the headache that was still roaring in his left temple and sipped at his cup. That man behind him had finally stopped complaining after being bribed with a complementary wine. In the sudden quiet of the cabin he could now hear the faint "tick" coming from his laptop at each new bulletin the RSS pulled up. He knew he would have to deal with the repercussions of this sooner or later. For the first time in his life, he chose later.

Quatre opened his eyes and reached out to dismiss the RSS feed. He got the laptop shut down and tucked back into its case just in time to hear the pilot announce that they would be landing in the next few minutes. Still sipping quietly upon his drink, the Arabian resource prince turned to look outside the window at the brilliant blue sky beyond. It would be nearing sunset, were he grounded, but from up here the sky was still filled with light. It had been so very long since he'd last seen the Earth; especially like this… he'd almost forgotten how beautiful it was.

Their luck with the press continued after the shuttle landed. No one spotted them coming out of the terminal and the employees who checked their passports were intelligent and well trained enough to keep the identities to themselves. Within a decent amount of time they had collected their baggage and a rental car and made their way toward hotel.

Halfway there, Quatre's cell began to ring. Digging into the pockets of his slate-grey slacks, the boy almost missed a large billboard announcing the arrival of the Three-Ring Circus. He twisted in his seat to get a better try and get a better look at it even as he found his phone, flipped it open, and pressed it to one ear. "Quatre Winner speaking."

"Fluff ball!" A familiar, smile-inducing voice rang out from the other end. Quatre felt his cheeks grow a little hot at the strange nickname he'd long since been given; he wondered if Duo was ever going to forget about that disastrous clothes dryer incident. Giving up on the billboard, Quatre dropped back into the passenger seat. "I just got your e-mail. How long you going to be in town for?"

"Mm, my itinerary has a week cleared." Quatre couldn't help a glance at his assistant as he said that. Though Rashid's eyes never left the road, he grunted in response to indicate that "yes, Master Quatre, you are staying the entire week if I have to steal your wallet and lock you out of your bank accounts to enforce it."

"That's great! My weekend is pretty clear so we could hang out whenever you want," the voice replied. There was a strange sound beneath the voice and then he heard Duo hiss, "Damnit, Rattrap…"

"Duo? Are you ok?"

"Huh? Oh… uh… hold on." There was a moment of fumbling and then the noise on the other end of it grew distant. Quatre frowned and switched the phone to his other ear so that he could lean against the window.

Rashid cleared his throat, "That billboard said that they'd be in town starting tonight."

"You caught that, huh?" Quatre couldn't help but laugh. The corners of Rashid's lips twitched faintly, he was obviously amused by his Master's obvious interest in the group.

"Sorry about that!" Duo returned to the other line after some slight static. Quatre chuckled, whatever Duo had been doing it had obviously been taxing, the other boy was out of breath. Unable to help himself, Quatre risked being a little rude and cut off whatever Duo was about to say:

"How would you like to go to the circus?"

++//\\++

"Trowaaaa," Catherine sing-songed as she walked through the "back area" of the circus set up, away from where the earliest of the customers and the crowd that normally came to watch the set up would be allowed to enter. It was less than half an hour to opening and she hadn't seen the boy anywhere since they'd pulled into the arena grounds earlier that afternoon. At first this hadn't been at all unusual; now that he was more experienced in their way of life, Trowa was expected to help with assembling the big top as well as the lesser tents which would house small shows and carnival booths. The last of those hadn't been involved in the circus a few years ago. While they'd had a vendor or two of their own, it hadn't been until after the war that they'd been able to expand their business into games and offering a variety of other food stuffs. As usual, there was already a small crowd gathered for these smaller entertainments and it ensured a large audience under the big top tonight.

For that Catherine was glad, but it was all for naught if she couldn't find her fellow performer. "Trowa! Hm… where did that boy go off to?"

During the war Trowa had often disappeared entirely before performances; at first they'd all been a little unsure as to why. The Ring Master had been absolutely livid about it, when the boy had cut it too close to performance time before he showed up. Yet, he had been so good at his job when he was around that he'd never been fired. When his reason had finally been revealed, Catherine had wished at the time that she had been shocked by it. Horrified, yes, for war was a horrible thing and to see a boy fighting in one even more so… but not shocked. She'd have had to have been entirely brainless not to have realized that there was a pattern of destruction and terrorist attacks following their circus wherever it moved, or that quiet, gentle Trowa was toting a rather large package with him most of the way. It wasn't something that they had ever discussed, even after he'd begun to regain his memories of it.

Losing him before a performance felt so familiar, though, in a surreal sort of way.

Just as she passed one of the storage tents she thought she heard a familiar voice. Catherine stopped, looking about for the speaker, and her eyes rested upon the tent flap that had been pulled back just enough to offer a small opening. "Trowa!" The woman put a laugh into her voice and pushed the tent flap open further as she took a step through it, "are you talking to the animals again—"

Two boys looked up at her as she entered and one of them put his hand upon a hard lump in his back pocket that could be mistaken for nothing but what it was—a gun. The one she had been looking for was sitting on top of an empty cage which normally held a few of the smaller poodles during transport. The dogs had been let out now that they were stopped, but there was still a lion in the cage beside them. Trowa turned his gaze from Catherine dismissively and shook his head at the other boy.

She knew the boy, though she'd not seen him in a very long time. He'd grown since the last time, in the way that most teenage boys did, and now stood a few inches taller than her. The spandex he'd used to wear constantly had been changed for jeans and though he still wore a tank top he'd thrown a denim jacket over it. Yet the messy hair hadn't changed and neither had those eyes—those dangerous, damning eyes.

"Catherine, you know Heero Yuy," Trowa spoke into the silence. Heero took his hand off the gun and allowed his jacket to conceal it once more. The Japanese boy nodded to her. Whatever the two had been discussing was obviously over now.

"It's… nice to see you again, Heero." The woman knew that her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. She extended her hand to him and he shook it and none of them thought that their meeting was pleasant. "Trowa," she said, turning to him, "I finally finished the work on your new costume. It's lying on your bed, so you don't use the old one."

"Alright Catherine, I'll meet you at the tent in a few minutes."

Catherine knew dismissal when she heard it. Heart racing and uneasy, she threw them both another false smile and turned to exit the way that she'd come. Whatever they had been discussing, Catherine couldn't bring herself to believe that it was show business.

++//\\++

The sun had disappeared behind the city skyline by the time that Quatre found himself in a somewhat shabby apartment complex on the wrong side of the river. The orange sky beyond the dark sky scrapers was an eerie sight and he turned away from the open end of the hallway to face the door before him. Apartment B210 had a green door whose paint was beginning to chip and peel away. The numbers were tarnished metal fixed to the top of it, directly below a peephole. He'd knocked but no one had answered; perhaps he'd gotten the wrong apartment?

Just as he'd turned to walk away and call Duo there was a scrape of a chain on the other side of the door. It swung open then and was pulled open to reveal the smiling face of his friend, "Sorry about that, I was trying to dry off the ingrate. Come in a minute? I need to find a better shirt…"

Duo stepped aside without further ado and left the door open for Quatre. Though a little nervous about entering the place, Quatre stepped in regardless and closed the door behind him; it took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the gloom beyond.

The first impression he got of Duo's apartment was one he hadn't expected at all: it was _clean_. Meticulously so, in fact. Despite the unkempt appearance of the apartment building and surrounding area, Duo had managed to create a tranquil little haven for himself. The soft smell of cinnamon apples hung in the air and if the furniture was a little shabby and well-used, Duo had gone out of his way to make certain that the fabric was cleaned and surfaces well polished. Quatre thought that if he got close enough he would be able to use the coffee table as a mirror.

The carpet had a few stains but was obviously vacuumed, and there wasn't a single spot of clutter left out. In fact, the room had something of a "minimalist" look to it—a single shelf of books was on the mantle above a soot-less fireplace, a single magazine was on the coffee table with a television remote, and the TV itself on a stand. If he hadn't known any better, Quatre would have thought that the man hadn't been living here more than a few days.

Something grey darted across the living room and dived beneath the couch. Duo came back into the room from what was probably his bedroom, grumbling something under his breath and holding a damp towel. Finally able to get a good look at his friend, Quatre finally noticed the red-welted scratches drawn along his forearms and hands, "What happened?"

"That happened," Duo pointed at a scraggly wet tail poking out from beneath the couch.

"Is that a…" Quatre peered closer. He stepped off the square of hardwood that defined the entrance way into the carpeted living room. Dipping onto one knee the blond tried to look under the couch. A pair of wild green eyes glared at him from the darkness and a low yowl kept him from reaching out to the cat. "Oh."

"Rattrap." Duo sighed what appeared to be the cat's name with no small amount of agitation. "Rescued the damn thing from some kids a few days back. I was trying to find another home for it, but when I found out the shelter was more inclined to kill it…"

"I don't think cats like water, Duo," Quatre couldn't help but smile a little as he realized why the cat looked so odd—it was soaking wet.

"Well, I'd have to agree with you there, buddy-boy." A chuckle came from the braided boy as he dried his hands off with the towel instead. "Alright, Rat, just stay that way then…. I'll turn the air off." He headed back into the bedroom and a moment later Quatre heard the sound of a dresser opening.

"Why did you try giving him a bath anyway? Don't cats clean themselves?"

"Yeah, but he desperately needed a flea dip. I think I got rid of most of the problem, though, and managed to apply the medication. I really don't need an infested apartment."

Nodding in agreement to that, Quatre couldn't help but cross into the small alcove of a kitchen. There was a window through one wall of it that looked out into the living room and a swinging half-door in the entrance. The kitchen would have been cramped with two people in it, but a single person fit comfortably. Just like the rest of the apartment, the place was spotless, and even the sink smelled faintly of lemons, rather than garbage or mold. There were signs of wear upon the pot holders, and the sheer amount of cooking paraphernalia seen in the door-less cabinets indicated that Duo cooked… a lot.

He went back into the living room as Duo exited the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Now changed into a dry shirt and pants, the boy paused to shut off the air-conditioner as he'd said he would. "Do you know where they set up?"

Quatre nodded, "I got directions for it before I left the hotel. I'm surprised Rashid let me go anywhere on my own. He actually trusted me with my cell phone."

Duo laughed at that and stopped at the door to wriggle his feet into their shoes, rather than bother to re-lace them. Quatre crossed the living room and opened the door, slipping out of it to wait on him. "He's right on that point. You're too much of a workaholic sometimes."

The blond rolled his eyes and smiled. Duo was another person who had been after him to take a holiday for the past few months. Well, they had finally got their wish. The braided boy slipped out the door and shut it behind him, pausing to turn the key in the lock. He tested the door before they moved to the downward stairwell. "Have you heard from Trowa at all lately?"

"No…" Quatre shook his head with a slight frown. "We had been e-mailing for awhile but… you know how these things go. He's busy with the circus, I have the corporation."

"Yeah," Duo replied faintly, nodding. Of all the other Gundam pilots, Duo had been the one who had been the easiest to keep in contact with. Of course, Duo was the only one who also went out of his way to call or write at least once a week, if not more. The camaraderie they'd had in the war had grown into an actual friendship over time—one that hadn't fallen away once the world was at "rights" again. Quatre was more grateful for that than he could, or would, express. Though he'd had the Maguanac Corp at his side for years now, he found it was nice to have a friend outside of their organization. "Have you heard at all from Heero?"

Duo actually laughed, shaking his head. "Who actually hears from that guy? Nah. He's shown up once or twice, usually out of the blue, but never for too long."

Quatre nodded. That sounded like his own experience with the Japanese boy. They'd not had much contact during the war and had only worked in cooperation for a short time before the end of it. Regardless, he'd gotten the distinct impression that Heero was keeping "tabs" on him, for the boy seemed inclined to show up at the oddest times and disappear again before you realized he'd even been there. It was good to know that Duo had had the same thing happen. "I heard the Preventers might be expanding again."

"Mm. Wouldn't know anything about that," Duo shrugged, "but I wouldn't doubt it. Une is rather insistent that we get real offices set up elsewhere to back up the local police forces, especially out in the colonies. Can't really go into why, but…"

"I understand," Quatre flashed him a smile to show that it was okay. They both knew that Quatre could get whatever information he wanted from the General-Director, but it was best that he went to her for it rather than get it through Duo. The latter option would only spell trouble for the Preventer agent. Quatre lead him towards the pewter Mercedes he'd rented for his stay.

Duo whistled a low, soft note, "You sure do know how to travel."

"Rashid picked it out," Quatre replied with a laugh and clicked the button on his keys to unlock the doors.

++//\\++

The big top was packed with people, all happy and excited for the big circus. Trowa could never get enough of watching them. From his place behind the 'stage' he watched the kids' faces through the gap in the curtain. Theirs were always the best; they were always filled with such innocent wonder at the world around them, for them everything was new, colourful and exciting. They hadn't yet learned to see the world in black and white, though it'd surely be beaten into them over time… no matter how false that image was.

He settled his half-mask onto his face as the music signaled the end of the current high-rise act. He and Catherine's knife show would be up directly after the trained poodles, and then he'd have his lion taming act. The others liked to say that he must have been born into a circus, for he seemed to be perfectly suited for just about any act they could come up with. Trowa occasionally wondered if they were right.

A female cleared her throat behind him. He turned, expecting Catherine, to instead be met with a blond in white. The changes in her since he'd last seen her in person were expected—hers was a face that was plastered all over the air waves and magazines, and all of her debates and speeches broadcast as special reports. She was the sweetheart of the solar system… and she was standing behind him with a small bouquet of flowers.

Relena Dorlian greeted him with a warm smile, the kind reserved for friends and family. She was resplendent in white, with her hair done up as if she were attending a formal function and not a lowly circus act. "Its customary, isn't it, to bring your favorite actor flowers?"

"In the theatre, perhaps," Trowa replied with an equal smile. Regardless he stepped forward to meet her and greeted her with a hug that was careful of her gift. "But they're appreciated."

"I wanted a chance to see you in person," Relena explained, returning his hug briefly before they stepped apart. "Catherine would probably like these more, wouldn't she?"

"Probably," Trowa couldn't help but agree. "For what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I have to have a reason to visit?" Relena teased. She took a seat upon one of the crates stacked nearby, despite the dress she wore. The flowers she put down beside her and she crossed her legs before her. The girl gave him a playful sort of look, legs swinging a little from her perch.

"I somehow doubt you came here just to admire my outfit," Trowa replied as he leaned against a similar stack of crates behind him.

"The bare-chested look does suit you. Did Catherine design that?"

"She did. I wonder about her, sometimes, parading me around like this." They both laughed at that and Trowa crossed his arms over his chest. It wasn't that he was embarrassed, he told himself, but that it was cold out. "Are you staying for the performance?"

"No," Relena replied with a regretful smile, "I'm actually on my way out of town, I'm afraid. Some business has come up on L4 and its imperative that I am there. I actually stopped to apologize; I know I told you…"

Trowa shook his head, "Don't, Relena. You know I understand. Have you spoken to Quatre? I know he'd want to see you."

"Actually I can't seem to get a hold of him," the girl frowned with a faint sigh. "When I realized I'd be heading up there I tried to call his office, but they told me that 'Mr. Winner is not accepting any calls at the moment and his schedule is booked for the next week. If you would like a meeting, I can pencil you in two months from now.'"

Trowa's visible brow raised in response to that, more than a little surprised to hear it. "They know who they're talking to?"

"Yes; but that doesn't matter, it seems. He's not answered his personal e-mails, yet, either… but I doubt that I'll return to an empty inbox when I next check it. Have you heard from him lately?"

The clown had to give her a wistful smile at that, "It isn't often that I have access to a computer these days. He's been rather busy."

"Yes," She frowned, "There was this horrible article released earlier today…" Before she could go further, the girl's pager beeped. Taking it from her pocket, she sighed and hopped off the box. "I'm really sorry, Trowa. I'm glad you're in town… hopefully I'll be back before you pack up."

"We should be here for a week. We're doing a long tour on Earth again, so there should be another chance."

Relena nodded and flashed her friend a smile. They'd seen one another off and on over the past year, what with her constantly being on the move in order to handle the political repercussions of the ESUN. The last time they'd met up, she's promised him that they'd go out for dinner or a movie when he returned to Earth that spring. It seemed it would have to be put on hold now, but Trowa didn't mind. He stood up straight to give her another, farewell hug.

He couldn't help but feel sorry for her at times; no matter how much she gave, people always demanded more. Such was life, however. "I'll tell Catherine you brought her flowers," He told Relena as he released her. She laughed, and he was glad to see that she was still capable of doing so, despite the slight bags he could see under her eyes from stress and lack of sleep.

"Thank you. I'll catch you when I get back."

Trowa watched as Relena left through the flap she'd come in through. Another man might have offered her an escort, but by this point Trowa knew better. That was a girl who could very well take care of herself… nor did he doubt that a very specific sort of protection was following her every step of the way. Not a minute after Relena had left, Catherine entered and stopped to look at the bundle of flowers.

"Trowa?"

"Relena thought you'd like them," He answered and returned to his observation point to watch the hopping dogs and laughing children. Despite that, he didn't miss the happy smile that crossed his friend's face.

++//\\++

He watched from the shadows as she left the circus tent. This stop had been on her itinerary all day; he'd barely managed to catch the update in time to circle back around to the brilliantly coloured tents he'd just left behind. His eyes tracked her as she made her way through the back of the set-up unmolested. By all appearances the circus staff knew her and her association with their co-worker well enough that no one thought to question why she was back there. He followed her at a distance.

It had been three months since he'd last seen her at a conference in Beijing and he couldn't help but note that as beautifully as she was dressed, there was a certain strain upon her features that spoke of working too hard. The boy frowned to himself; it was one thing to work hard and quite another to work one's self to sickness. Perhaps someone needed to teach her that.

++//\\++


	2. For which there is no title

**CHAPTER TWO**  
_** For which there is no title…**_

The bare muscles of the man's chest rippled and glistened with sweat in the coloured lights cast upon him; they had stopped the music entirely for this part of the act, the silence and bated breath of the audience providing the perfect backdrop as the spiky-haired clown turned himself up into a handstand upon the seat of the motorcycle. Upon the ground this still would have been considered difficult, as the kickstand wasn't down. Up in the air it was simply terrifying, at least for the blond man watching at too great a distance to possibly save his friend should he fall.

That there wasn't a net below Trowa's precarious perch had not gone unnoticed by the Arab watching him. An indignant part of him had the nerve to be angry at the ringmaster and Catherine, whom he knew should have protested at so dangerous an act. Another, vaguely sheepish voice, reminded him that Trowa knew what he was doing.

The low thrum of a horn playing a slow, almost sorrowful melody sounded through the tent. Quatre felt almost as if the notes were vibrating through his entire body—or was he shaking? It was possible. The drink that he'd bought at concession earlier now dangled loosely from one hand, forgotten as his concentration had been stolen by the Heavyarms' ex-pilot. Trowa shifted his hands slowly, carefully keeping the balance on both his body and the bike strung on top of the wire hung stories above their heads. Millimeter by millimeter, Trowa edged himself onto one palm, his other hand coming off to stretch into the empty air. Not a single soul was breathing in the tent.

Elbows settling upon his knees as he leaned forward, one knuckle found its way to Quatre's mouth. He bit nervously on the flesh; almost entirely unawares that he was doing so. "_Don't fall. Don't fall. Don't fall_," The mantra repeated monotone within his head. He wished that he had a better view.

Though the pair of them had found seats at the top of the bleachers set up inside the big top, the major problem with seeing the high wire act was that it was so very far away. Despite that his eyesight was perfect, Quatre couldn't make out the detail he wanted most to see: Trowa's face.

His heart began to beat again, one weakly protesting thump, when Trowa lowered himself back onto two hands. Another thump sounded in his ears as the clown lowered himself back into the seat of the bike. It wobbled a little beneath him, causing the audience to gasp collectively, and then he was back in the seat and gunned the engine. The bike zoomed across the rest of the wire and he parked it on top the platform.

The tent exploded with noise. As the audience surged to their feet around him, including his company for the evening, Quatre found himself glued to his seat. He could barely see Trowa around the big hair of the woman standing in front of him, but if he looked up far enough he could just make out his half-masked face as the boy took his bows to the crowd. For a moment, he could swear that Trowa looked right at him.

++//\\++

The show had been dazzling. Even better than the first time he'd seen it with Hilde, Duo thought. If anything could be said about the Three-Rings was that while their name might not have been terribly imaginative their performances were spectacular. He'd liked the clowns, especially; not that he had any bias. "I didn't know that Trowa had begun a tight rope act!" Quatre marveled half to himself as he stared down at the paper cup in his hands. His lips fumbled for the straw, finally catching it and sucking only to realize that he'd already drained the cup.

"Neither did I," Duo agreed, nodding. The two were still in their seats near the top of the bleachers, waiting for some of the crowd to clear out before they tried to get down. "I wonder how they got that motorcycle up there, though. I never saw it until he just… appeared with it."

The blond shook his head in wonder, a slightly distant look on his face. The music was still playing from a live band near the entry way to the "back stage," a strange and hypnotic tune which seemed to be present at all circuses—both in real life and on television. Duo couldn't help but smile a little to himself as he noticed a familiar red head with her head poked out the flap. He raised a hand, waving to her energetically but Catherine didn't seem to see him and ducked back into the darkness. Pouting a little, Duo shrugged and sighed, "Well, what ya going to do?"

His companion made a non-committal noise and Duo turned to face him, "You alright, fluff ball?"

"Huh?" Quatre started, physically jerking back into reality from where he'd been lost in the contents (or lack thereof) of his cup. For an awkward moment all he found that he could do was stare at Duo and then he laughed and shook his head. "Yeah, I'm fine. I guess I just got a little lost for a minute."

The braided boy tilted his head a little, considering that. He didn't quite believe it, but would it do Quatre any good for him to say so? Duo didn't think so. Instead he climbed to his feet and gave a stretch. They'd been sitting for the full two hours of the show and he was feeling a little stiff in his back and neck. The boy pivoted his waist from side to side to crack his back. When Quatre stood as well the two worked their way over to the stairs cut into the middle of the bleachers. "I really like what they're doing with the whole act. It's improved… did you ever see their old performances?"

Duo glanced behind him in time to see Quatre shake his head. When they reached the ground level he stopped, turning to let the other boy catch up to stride with him, as well as wait for the last of the crowd to disperse from the exits. A moment of genius struck him like a bolt, "You know what? We should go see him! Congratulate him on opening night or some such."

There were times when Quatre had something of an owlish look to him, normally when he was surprised by someone else suggesting something he'd wanted to do for himself; the blond donned that look now, mouth gaping at the other boy. Duo mentally congratulated himself on having read Quatre correctly. He'd considered, on the odd occasion, telling Quatre just how much of an open-book he really was, where his friends were concerned. While Duo had never seen Quatre in a board meeting, he privately thought that his friend must have mastered a good 'poker' face by now, or else he'd never have survived this long in the corporate world. At least if television was to be believed about such places.

"I don't know, Duo," Quatre replied tentatively, after some soundless flapping of his lips, "He probably would want to rest…"

"That guy?" Duo had to scoff. Grabbing his friend by the arm, Duo proceeded to drag Quatre into the crowd of people still milling about the nearest exit. It wouldn't take a genius to sneak them 'back stage' when most of the audience was still outdoors and a lot of the performers were out front signing autographs. "You know as well as I do that Trowa is a tank; a measly rope walk isn't going to knock him out."

"That wasn't all…" Quatre began to protest. The boy fell silent, then, and Duo decided to pretend that he hadn't said anything at all.

Once outside the tent, Duo took a headcount of the actors around them. Standing on tip-toe he was tall enough to see over the heads of most of the crowd. A familiar red-head could be seen near a cotton-candy vendor, and he noted a few other clowns handing out balloons… but no, the half-naked, half-masked tight-rope star was nowhere to be seen. There was little wonder in that—a year wasn't going to be enough to change Trowa into an extrovert, even if this were his job now.

Duo dropped back on his heels and slipped behind a huge, muscular man that was covered in tattoos. The man was so busy showing of his pecks to the crowd that neither he, nor the people admiring him, noticed the two teenage boys sneaking around behind the curve of the big top tent towards the dark of the backstage area.

++//\\++

The door swung open before Wufei could finish knocking once upon it. The air was crisp and cold; it seemed that spring had lost that day's battle over the climate and the world had once again settled into overcast, miserable and wounded winter. He pulled his Preventer's jacket—the only one he had that was thick enough for this mess—tighter around himself and looked up at the tall Italian now looking down at the lot of them.

"Trowa!" Noin laughed, face splitting in a grin at the sight of the ex-pilot, "Surprise!"

"Surprise" was right, Wufei thought, for Trowa merely stared at them for a long moment. Unlike the rest of the pilots, Wufei hadn't spent much time at all around Trowa during the war. Perhaps it was because of this that he noticed the way that the clown's body stiffened just a little at the sight of them. That shock never made it to Trowa's face, and soon the boy nodded to them. "Good evening. I hadn't expected visitors."

That was as cool a response as any Wufei had expected once he'd heard the plan the women had concocted for that night's trip. Though he'd suspected it when Sally had invited him out with "the girls," they had waited until they reached the fair grounds to inform him that tonight wasn't _just_ a pleasant outing for the four of them. He could see the logic in their arguments, but Wufei suspected that Trowa wasn't going to be terribly happy at being cornered like this.

"Well, we just had to come by and see the show." The blonde to his left smiled pleasantly at their quarry. That wasn't a lie, Wufei noted, merely a half-truth. The women had been interested in seeing the show… and he had to admit that it hadn't been _terrible_. Trowa's acts had been actually interesting, even if he had little to no doubt that Trowa was entirely safe during all of his 'death-defying' stunts. "It's been such a long time since we've all seen you."

Trowa nodded. He glanced at Lady Une and then the Chinese boy, neither of whom had yet to say anything. When the other boy's eyes landed upon him, Wufei shrugged and stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his jacket to warm them. All four of them were wearing their jackets, though there were street clothes underneath them, and thus had had the benefit of no one wanting to be anywhere near them. They were also a major clue that this was not merely a social call.

"I hope you enjoyed it," the clown replied smoothly. He didn't seem inclined to invite them into the trailer or to even move from the door of it, despite that he was standing shirtless in pants which couldn't possibly be thick enough to warm him. Wufei admired the fact that Trowa wasn't even shivering; or he would have, that was, if he weren't getting annoyed with having to stare up the two foot difference in height currently between them. Until this moment he'd thought that Duo was tall….

The six inches between the ground and the first step up into the trailer didn't help anything, either.

"We did," Une replied and tilted her head, "Might we come in a moment?"

Trowa didn't budge from the doorway. Instead he leaned against the side of it and crossed his arms over his chest. From this angle, Trowa's bangs didn't hide anything from the four people standing below him; it didn't matter, though. Trowa's face was as unreadable as stone. "You can… when you tell me what it is you're after."

A slight smirk twisted one corner of Une's lips. "We'd rather not discuss that in the cold." What she really meant was that she didn't want to discuss it where others could hear. Wufei and Trowa's eyes met again and Wufei offered the boy nothing more than a lifted brow.

"We don't have a warrant," Noin interjected, her voice pitched carefully so that it wouldn't carry too far into the night. "You know we can't demand anything. We just wanted to come, as friends, and ask a few questions."

After a moment of careful deliberation Trowa moved back into the trailer. They took the door he left open as an invitation and, one by one, entered the small living space. The last one in, Wufei turned to close the door and paused. Black eyes piercing out into the night beyond, he looked around the otherwise deserted set up for the movement he'd thought he'd seen out of the corner of his eye. Then a member of the crew laughed nearby, exiting the big top with some equipment and Wufei relaxed. Writing himself off as paranoid, Wufei shut the door.

++//\\++

The station that Quatre had the car radio tuned to was mostly static and neither boy really cared. Duo's eyes stared fuzzily at the brilliant red lights marking the rear of the car head of them. Finally he blinked and his eyes burned with the sensation that he'd left them open a little too long. Leaving the fairgrounds was proving to be as difficult as it _hadn't_ been reaching them. They'd been stuck in traffic for the past half-hour and had barely moved an inch.

In the driver's seat beside him Quatre tapped one hand on the steering wheel in time with the beat of the barely audible music, the rest of his body leaned casually against the door of the car. The blue eyes underneath his semi-wild blond bangs were distant. Duo had no doubts as to his friend's ability to drive a car, but he did notice that when the van in front of them crawled forward several feet, it took Quatre a minute to realize and move their car as well.

"Sure you don't want me to drive?" he asked quietly, though he knew that he'd be no better.

"Nah," Quatre muttered behind the hand that was pressed to his left cheek that was currently obscuring half of his mouth. His temple rested against the window, and Duo wondered if the cold was helping with the headache his friend had mentioned. Instead of asking, he just shifted in his seat and tried to make himself a little more comfortable.

"You're sure you don't have any idea what they wanted?" Quatre asked in that same monotone voice which Duo had come to associate with his friend's most introspective moments. Closing his eyes against the glare from the various vehicular lights surrounding them, Duo barely managed to bite off the aggravated sigh that question induced. Did he have any idea what Wufei was doing questioning Trowa at the circus? No, no he didn't—why? Because the man had turned him down when he'd wanted to go to that very place; because Une, and Sally, and Noin had all thought to take his partner on this little foray and leave him out in the dark.

Well aware that he was acting like a petulant child, Duo just shook his head. "Maybe they were asking him questions about the stunts he was doing. That tightrope act had to be against some sort of safety regulations."

Quatre's made a rude noise which seemed like the most appropriate response to such a ludicrous statement. "Too bad we didn't get to see him ourselves, though," Duo continued on to try and relieve the mood a little, "I was hoping he'd still be in that outfit. Or a towel."

"Duo!" Duo heard, not saw, Quatre sit up straight in shock. Without having to open his eyes he knew that the other boy would be staring at him, slack jawed and eyes side. A squeak of leather informed him that Quatre's hands had also reflexively grabbed the steering wheel.

"Eyes on the road, fluff ball," Duo replied with a teasing smirk. When there wasn't any response to that, he continued, "It isn't as if you weren't thinking it yourself. The man looked _good_. He was always kind of muscular, but he's really filled out since he went full-time circus freak."

"You… you really are incorrigible." Peeking one eye open, Duo glanced into the rearview mirror. Quatre had it turned at such an angle that he was easily able to see the faint blush on the Arab's cheeks without having to turn to do so. Of course, it could have just been the reflection of the brake lights… Duo chose to believe that it wasn't.

"Trowa looked healthy," Quatre admitted when the silence had stretched to an uncomfortable measure.

Now Duo did turn his head, eyebrows lifting in question as he stared at the blond next to him. "Healthy?"

"He did!" The frown on Quatre's cheeks puffed them faintly, giving him something akin to a chipmunk's appearance. By some strange twist of fate, Quatre's body hadn't change noticeably since the war—not compared to the rest of the boys he'd fought beside. Though he'd grown an inch or two and lost most of the baby fat left in his face, he was still remarkably slender and frail looking. The one time that either of them had said anything about it, the day that Duo had found out that, yes, Quatre _did_ in fact need to shave his jaw, it had been hinted that the cause of this might lie in that his mother had been of European descent. She was French, to make no small point about it; apparently it was a topic of ill regard where Quatre's paternal family was considered.

"Ah ha." Duo shook his head and let his hat tip down over his eyes a bit as he leaned his seat back a little further.

Quatre turned the static off and they were left in a quiet car with only the sound of the air conditioner, the thrum of the other cars' engines and each other's breathing to listen to. Duo continued to watch his friend through the veil of his eyelashes, bangs and hat. Despite that no worse a comment had been made than the implication that Trowa was a rather nice-looking individual and that Duo _appreciated_ said niceness, Quatre was looking rather disturbed. The car rolled forward another five feet with the rest of the traffic around them. Whatever the hold-up was it didn't seem as if they were going to be out of it any time soon.

Just as he was beginning to wonder if he'd said something damning (and simultaneously consider the possibilities of passing it off as a joke) Quatre spoke up. "Are you gay?"

From any other guy that question would have been something to meet with laughter and indignation. There simply was no other response to give it. Except that Quatre wasn't any other guy, and there was none of the insult in his voice that such an individual would have put in there. Instead, the question was soft, curious… scared. Duo shifted nervously.

"I see what I see," he answered slowly and shrugged.

"That isn't an answer," the Arab accused.

Duo's first response was another shrug; that that wasn't acceptable revealed itself in the way that the frown of Quatre's lips deepened. With a roll of his eyes he sighed heavily. "Alright, alright. Fine." Mouth open to answer the question more honestly, Duo stopped. He reconsidered, opened his mouth again, and once more paused mid-vowel. Despite the fantastic show of awkward in the passenger seat, Quatre managed to keep his eyes on the road; his eyes were all but glued to the van in front of him, pale blond brows scrunched above them as he thought. "Duo…"

"It isn't a straight answer," the braided man finally blurted.

It was a long moment before Quatre began to laugh. Catching what, exactly, he had just said, Duo couldn't help but join in softly. He snuck a look at the boy beside him, only to catch Quatre's eyes dead on. The two stared quietly at one another and then began to laugh again, much more loudly this time. The SUV behind them honked and Quatre collected himself long enough to pull forward the twenty feet he'd been neglecting.

When they calmed down, Quatre twittered as he said: "He did… develop nicely."

"And purple _is_ his colour," Duo added with an impish grin. Quatre began to laugh again.

++//\\++

"Minister Darlian."

Relena looked up from the papers spilt across her lap and the fold-down airline table, a touch of irritation upon her brow. The woman now standing over her was young by most people's standards, but far too old by comparison to the girl sitting before her to have had such a silly expression of reverence drawn upon her face. Expecting an autograph request, for there had been no few instances where someone had gotten confused over the differences between a politician and a celebrity, Relena reluctantly set her papers in her lap and pulled her best mask of polite attention across her face. "Can I help you?"

The flight attendant seemed a little surprised at the friendly tone with which Relena had addressed her and that, in turn, caused a small pang of guilt to Relena's conscience. She was, after all, a servant to the people—and who was to say that the woman wasn't merely there to ask a business related question? "It isn't all about you," she mentally chided herself and widened the smile on her face just a little.

"Ma'am," the flight attendant recovered a little and drew a small package out from behind her back, "This is rather unusual, Minister, but… I was just readying the coffee that you asked for and I found this among the mugs. It's addressed to you."

The bag she held out was made of pink-and-white-hearted cellophane, tied at its open end with a red silk ribbon and filled inside with individually wrapped candies. Without opening the package Relena could see that there were heart shaped candies as well as a few in simple primary shapes. And, dangling from a string that was tied around the bow itself was a small gift-tag with her name on it. Relena accepted the package with a smile and word of thanks, after which the flight attendant smiled broadly and returned to her area behind the curtain; presumably she was still preparing that coffee.

Papers forgotten, Relena set the package down on her lap and lifted the gift-tag in her hand. "Relena" was printed in careful black ink on one side of it. Turning it over, she found that the back was blank. Relena knew that she wasn't supposed to accept gifts without running them having been run through her security staff—especially gifts of an edible nature! And yet…

Her eyes flickered towards the curtain that masked the tiny area the stewardess worked in. It didn't move and it was obvious that the woman wasn't at all curious about the gift. Before she'd boarded the private carrier earlier that evening, Mike and Gareth, the two burly bodyguards who followed her everywhere, had checked the shuttle for anything suspicious top to bottom. The stewardess would have had her belongings looked over, of course, and had any of them found a single thing they would have thought strange they would have stopped her from boarding.

Which meant that either they had overlooked something ("Unlikely," Relena thought, "Those two are both perfectionists to an unhealthy level…") or else that the person who had placed it was someone of a seemingly unnatural skill level. Unable to help herself, she glanced behind her to the place where both bodyguards were catching a moment of shut eye. She'd given them leave to do so since it was highly unlikely that anything would catch them unaware out in the middle of space… Relena smiled to herself and opened her purse, stuffing the bag of chocolates into it for later. Even if he wasn't brave enough to give these to her himself, she still thought it was nice of him to leave her little unexpected little presents.

++//\\++

It was freezing outside and Catherine just wanted to get a hot shower, a cup of hot cocoa, and settle down with the latest romance novel she'd picked up for an hour or two before bed. Catherine picked her way through the muddy sludge where most of their personal trailers had been set, trying to keep from slipping or twisting an ankle as the ground sucked at her shoes, threatening to claim the high heels for their own. She was tempted to let it have them.

Just as she turned the corner around the home of their resident contortionist she was surprised to be confronted with the sight of people exiting her trailer. People that wore Preventers uniforms, at that.

"No," Catherine realized as the fourth, and last, of them stepped out and she was able to get a good look at them in the light that spilled from inside the trailer, "those are just Preventers _jackets_."

Still, she wasn't certain that it was a good thing. Instead of approaching the trailer, Catherine felt herself hanging back. Quickly as she could, she ducked back around the corner of the trailer she was standing near and peeked around it to watch as Trowa came to the door. His shape was black against the light within so she couldn't make out the expression on his face, but neither did it matter as their voices drifted to her ears from across the silent fair grounds.

"So, you'll give us a call if you hear from him?" A cold voice asked; male.

"Of course," her brother responded, sounding as reasonable as he ever did. From this distance Catherine wasn't able to tell if he meant it or not.

"It really was good to see you again, Trowa," a female voice piped up. The comment sounded a little forced, but nonetheless truthful. That was a feeling that Catherine knew only too well; Trowa wasn't easy to get along with on the best of days and sometimes he was an absolute pain to talk to, no matter how much you loved him. Catherine wondered who this woman was that she had the right to sound like that.

He didn't say anything to that, and another woman piped up, "Do think about our offer, Barton. We'll be in touch." With that final statement the group began to move away.

Catherine quickly straightened her costume out and turned around the corner of the trailer she'd been hiding behind. Now out in the open, she passed the group as they were walking away; three women, total, and a very short boy who couldn't have been much older than Trowa. Catherine thought she might have seen them somewhere before, but in simple passing she couldn't put any names to their faces. They were all Preventers, though, and that in itself sent a shiver or worry down her back.

"Trowa!" She called out with a forced cheer as she approached the trailer. The boy had seen her coming up and stopped himself from closing the door. The faintest of smiles appeared on his face and he held a hand out to help her up into the trailer. "You didn't come out to the front after the show! There were a lot of fans waiting on you."

"I'm sorry, Catherine," He replied as she hopped into their home and took her shoes off at the door. Trowa reached around behind her and reached for the door handle to pull it closed. The lock fell in place behind it with a mind-easing "click." "I got held up by some old friends. I'll be there tomorrow, I promise."

"Don't promise to me, you scoundrel!" She laughed and wandered into the kitchenette to collapse upon the bench built against the wall. "Promise to Jeffery. He was the one who had to deal with all of your disappointed fans."

The look which Trowa bestowed upon her was priceless. It had taken her the better part of two years to learn to read his looks, but once she had… "Don't give me that, mister. You know that costume change did wonders! You were popular before, but now you've got all the ladies drooling over you. I think you made Arnold a little jealous tonight."

Catherine reached up to disentangle the headdress from her red-ginger curls, eyes following Trowa as he returned to fixing the cocoa upon their small electric stove. "Tell Arnold that he can keep them. I've no use for a pack of screaming fan-girls."

"Too bad, I'm sure they'd have a use for you," Catherine couldn't help but tease. He threw her a little bit of a half-smirk over one naked shoulder and returned to carefully stirring the milk he was heating. Catherine had tried to introduce the boy to water and chocolate powder cocoa, but she had to admit that his way of making it tasted better.

Though she needed a shower, the woman was loathe to get back up onto her sore and tired feet. Instead she laid back into the bench a little, shoulders resting comfortably upon the wall behind her, and let her eyes drift once more to Trowa's back. The scar that ran across his back was still as vibrant as ever, tearing down the length of it in jagged steps. Not for the first time she wondered where it had come from; he had spent most of the war in their company and not even when he had lost his memory had he ever once been wounded in that particular spot.

She snapped out of her reverie when a mug of fresh cocoa was put on the table beside her a few minutes later. "I put extra cinnamon in it," Trowa informed her before his hand left the mug, green eyes gazing dispassionately into her own. A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature wormed its way down Catherine's back. Somehow she knew that he knew what she'd been looking at.

"Thank you," she replied and took the mug up. It was hot, but the warmth against her hands was well welcome.

He sat down across the table from her and merely nodded, his own mug making a soft 'thunk' against the wood. For a long time the two sat in silence, each sipping at their respective drinks. "Trowa," Catherine said when she couldn't take it any longer, "those people that were here…"

"From the war," he supplied when she drifted off. His head was lowered so that she could only see one of his eyes through his hair, but that eye was mostly closed and gazing down at the dark liquid in the mug he held. "They were looking for someone and thought I would know where he is."

"Do you?"

"Not at this moment, no."

"Trowa…" Catherine began, only to be cut off.

"If they ask you about him, please don't say anything."

Once again their eyes met, but this time there was a definite note of pleading in the young boy's face. It was rare that Catherine was allowed to see the child in him; somehow that very childishness in this matter was reassuring. "Alright, Trowa," She agreed in a whisper and knew that there was nothing she could deny her little brother.

++//\\++

A straight flight through to L4 was a weary and boring one. Most people occupied the time by sleeping much of it away; Relena finally stuffed the last of her papers back into the briefcase she had to carried them in on and settle back into her seat as the shuttle began its docking procedures. Though she had taken several very successful catnaps during the time there had been many much more important matters to see to than her getting unneeded shut eye. "I'll sleep when I'm dead," She muttered to herself, unconsciously echoing her father's favorite (_and morbidly prophetic_, her sleep-deprived and highly disrespectful funny-bone informed her) phrase.

"Miss?" Mike—or, more aptly, Michael though he hated such a "formal sounding" name—asked, his deep baritone penetrating her sleep-fogged mind.

"Oh, nothing," Relena threw him a smile and shouldered her purse. Looking about her she noticed that the shuttle was strangely still and quiet. Normally the engines were so loud…

"We've docked on L4-RS01, Miss Relena," Mike informed her in an amused tone which she took to meant that he'd addressed her several times already before she'd answered. He offered her a hand to help her up, which she took though she didn't need it. He was the gentleman of the two guards, though most people wouldn't have been able to tell that by looking at him. "Tall," "huge," and "mean" were usually the first three adjectives any person came up with to describe the darkly skinned man who now picked up her briefcase for her and lead her out of the shuttle cabin. The first two, while lacking in imagination, were unfailingly accurate. The third was simply ridiculous so long as you gave him no justified reason to behave in an unfriendly manner.

Though she'd been reluctant to employ bodyguards at first, Relena had to admit now that taking Mike and Gareth into her personal staff had been among the smartest decisions she'd ever made. Both men were entirely competent, level headed, and tended to make her day a little brighter simply by being themselves. While there was a certain level of distance one had to keep with their employees, Relena had found that she was able to put a great deal of trust and friendship into her working relationship with the two men. It was something which she had to be careful that the blood-thirsty press never got their sights on, though.

Gareth was waiting upon the platform outside the shuttle, as big and burly as ever. That was the one thing the two had in common, otherwise they were as different appearance wise anyone could have asked for. Where Gareth was so pale that one could safely say he "glowed" in the sunlight, Mike contrasted him by being the sort of dark that she had only before prescribed to the finest Godiva chocolate. Mike's facial features contained broad, flat shapes with a rounded edge to them, making him take on the appearance of a humanized jaguar, while Gareth's face could safely be described as being made of squares. Everything about the man was square, from his jaw, to his chin, to the protruding and shaggy brows over his eyes down to the tip of his nose; the sole acceptation was that his nose had been broken several times and now drew a rather crooked line directly down the middle of his face. Mike was bald, Gareth had thick brown hair and a beard; Mike was muscular, Gareth sported something of a belly. She liked to call them "yin" and "yang" in private.

With both of them dressed in identical, jet-black Armani suits they made quite a striking picture flanking the thin, will-o'-wisp of a Vice Foreign Minister as she strode through the VIP section of the shuttle terminal towards the protected departure bay. Certainly any molesters would think twice before approaching her, but that did not mean that the paparazzi was inclined to let her off the hook.

Those brave souls defied logic in the same sort of way that lemmings did cliffs.

The first flashbulb that went off did so in her much sleep deprived face, effectively stunning Relena into a moment of dazed shock. She went still, frozen just outside the double doors that should have taken her to a private pick-up zone designated for public officials, celebrities and other persons of note, and tried to blink the spots from her vision. All around her the cries of "Miss Darlian!" "Miss Peacecraft!" "Queen of the world!" "A question!" "Just a moment of your time!" blurred into one hazy sort of chatter and she felt one of her men slip his arm around her shoulders. The other—Mike?—interposed himself between her and the crowd and the trio began to ease their way through the milling bodies to where a limousine was parked against the curb.

After a few moments of jostling, the two managed to get both themselves and Relena into the waiting car without undue injury. Her bags were always sent ahead of her by a private car, so that the security detail could check them thoroughly before they were placed in her room, and Relena had no worries over that. She checked to make certain that Mike still had her briefcase and he did. The girl relaxed back into her seat and closed her eyes. She felt, not saw, the car begin to pull away from the crowd.

"How the fuck'd they find out you're here," Gareth muttered to himself.

"How do they ever find out?" She responded quietly. "We might as well have expected it."

To her other side Mike grunted, reminding her very much of a certain young pilot she'd used to know. The faintest of smiles crossed her lips and Relena patted the purse tucked safely against her side. The thought of his gift warmed her heart a little and the ten minute trip to her hotel was almost unbearable.

The same scene threatened to repeat itself when the limo pulled to a stop in front of the Al Hasha Hotel. Fortunately, most of the reporters had been left behind at the airport, and there were so few here that Relena suspected that while her trip had been leaked, her hotel had not. It was more than likely that the few reporters that met them there had counterparts stationed at every other likely hotel all over the colony.

Once again, she was ushered into the building in a hasty fashion, and once inside her ever loyal guards fell into step just behind her. She was thankful that the press at least had some idea of when to stop, for not one of them dared to try and follow her into the hotel itself. Check-in was simple, and the attendant, who was quite used to such affairs of state, informed her nicely that her luggage had arrived and been sent to her suite. Relena thanked her, collected the keys and went to the elevator with her entourage in tow. Inside the box she handed the two copies of the keys one to each of them and insisted upon taking her briefcase from Mike.

"I'm perfectly capable of carrying it myself, Mike," she insisted gently as she pried the piece of luggage from his fingers. While she was appreciative of his help, there were times when his ideals of what was and was not "womanly" could be quite oppressive. "I think I'm just going to retire, boys… The meeting isn't until tomorrow morning, if I have my time change right…"

"Exactly what we would have told you," Mike informed her. Deprived of his self-prescribed briefcase duty he took it upon himself to unlock the door to the suite and step in first. Lights on, Mike made a quick round of the three rooms within the suite and the both bathrooms, making certain that nothing was hidden and no one present before he returned to give the "all clear" for the two waiting at the door. That done, Relena quickly picked out and took the master bedroom, leaving her bodyguards to their joint room and to fight over the living room television.

She leaned against the door for a moment after she'd shut it, a sigh making its way out of her mouth. A quick glance about the room informed her of nothing save that it was yet another hotel room in yet another hotel… they all started to look the same after awhile. A king-sized bed that was always cold, a bathroom far larger than any one person could sensibly use, enough space to have built three decently sized rooms in, big-screen television, desk, walk-in closet for those persons who were rich enough and inclined to rent these suites as apartments, and a small chocolate mint set on her pillow. Relena gave the mint a superior sort of smile—she had something much better than silly little hotel chocolates.

The girl kicked her heels off at the door and crossed the plush carpet to put her purse down on the bed and crawl into the center of the soft mattress. Sitting in a cross-legged position that was incredibly unladylike, especially given that she was wearing a knee-length skirt, she unzipped her purse and took out the bundle of chocolates held within.

A yawn ripped at her throat as she untied the ribbon, but Relena ignored that. She would unpack the bags that the maids were certain to have put in her closet, as they always did, as soon as she'd had a chance to right herself again. Reaching for the remote that they'd conveniently left on the end of the bed, Relena pushed the power button for her TV and found the local news channel.

Her hands moved of their own accord, picking up a heart-shaped chocolate and unwrapping the brightly coloured foil that protected it as she listened to the newscaster recite that day's stock information. "…and following the announcement of the merger, Winner Corp has taken yet another dip in stock as protesters flock to the corporate office on L4-RS01. Though many sources have tried to get in touch with the corporations CEO, Quatre Winner, son of the late Zayeed Winner, it seems that all communication with the man is at stand still. Thus far the only response to come out of his office has been a firm decline to comment."

"In related news," the female anchor added to her male cohort's statements, "it seems Vice Foreign Minister Darlian has made a special trip to L4-RS01 in order to address growing concerns over the merger and what it means for an Earth bound corporation like Telacorp to merge with colony located Winner Corporation. There are large concerns that such a merger, while not only dropping many jobs in an already unsteady market, would form an illegal monopoly as well as subvert trade tariffs."

"That isn't the only reason Minister Darlian has for visiting us, however," another woman chimed in. The moment she appeared, Relena knew that she wasn't going to like whatever this woman said. Slouching a little over her chocolates, the girl braced herself for whatever horrible news that woman's smile held.

"What news do you have, Tracy?" The first woman asked, leaning forward in a way reminiscent only of old gossips leaning across their neighbor's fence.

"Sources have it that Minister Darlian has been in close contact with Mr. Winner for several years now, mostly through private lines. While they've made no secret of their friendship in the past, Minister Darlian's reaction this afternoon to those questioning her relationship with Mr. Winner seem to speak for themselves. As you probably know, Mr. Winner was recently named number two upon People magazine's list of most eligible bachelors—but friends of the man say that he may not remain that way very long."

"AHHH!" Relena protested, cutting off whatever other gossip the woman had launched into next. She wished she'd kept her shoes on, then she'd have something she could chunk at the TV. Relena reached behind her and settled for a pillow, though the reaction was somewhat less than fulfilling. "How DARE they?"

Fuming, the girl looked down at the pile of wrappers in her lap and realized she'd actually managed to work her way through half the bag without realizing it. Relena gave the softest growl and grabbed the remote to turn the blasphemous machine off; she could hope all she wanted that this bit of gossip would remain in local channels only but she knew how unlikely that was.

When had the news gone from reporting facts to being yet another spring board for idle gossip and pointless filler? She rolled her eyes and slumped once more over the pile of candy. Unwrapping one last piece, Relena stared at the small, milk-chocolate heart and felt the outrage drain out of her as quickly as it'd come. Her eyes itched with sleep and she felt a little dizzy, but Relena put the chocolate to her lips and bit into the sweet confection. This one seemed to have some sort of cherry filling… those were always her favorites. "How does he always know?" She asked the chocolate in the whiniest voice she'd allowed to come out of her mouth in ages, one that she didn't even have the heart to chide herself for.

With a sigh, the girl finished the candy and sucked her fingers clean. Though she knew she should clean the wrappers up and put the candy away, or at least change into her pajamas, the girl found herself crawling up the bed towards her pillows. "Just five minutes," she remembered thinking before her head found her pillow and sweet, complete oblivion.

++//\\++


	3. Of Kitty Cats and Bunny Slippers

**CHAPTER THREE**  
_** Of kitty cats and bunny slippers…**_

When Duo woke, it was usually a sudden and immediate affair. One moment he would be seemingly deep into sleep and the next those curious blue eyes were open and watching the world with complete and utter clarity. His "usual" wake up, however, did not include furred, five-pound objects falling onto the middle of his back at five in the morning. Giving a startled noise, the boy came up swinging, flipped over onto his back and got tangled into his bed sheets. Then he met the floor.

The yowling of Rattrap was his first indication that what had attacked him had not been a burglar or angry ex-oz soldier or any of the other number of things Duo's sleep-fogged mind had conjured for itself in its moment of terror but a simple, annoying, god-damned _cat_. Duo pushed himself up to a sitting position and looked around for the increasingly loud sounds of distressed feline coming from somewhere in the tangle of bedding. Then he saw it, the writhing lump of linen that was slowly making its way across the bedroom floor.

He surged to his feet and tackled it, knowing that it wasn't going to hold still no matter that he was trying to help it get free. Somehow, the cat had managed to get itself wound up in a bundle of the sheets. Duo sat cross-legged on the floor once he'd managed to get the cat-bundle into his arms and began to figure out how to free the thing without hurting either of them. He'd almost succeeded, but then Rattrap's paw came snaking out of the linen to leave yet another set of fresh, bright red scratches on the back of his hand. Dropping the whole bundle, Duo cussed at the cat and put his hand to his mouth to suck on the wound.

Rattrap wormed himself free of her trap and took off like a shot for the door. "Yeah you better run!" Duo called out after him, not that he thought the cat would care. "Why did I even bother to take in your ass, anyway?"

He dug at one eye with the heel of his unwounded hand, getting the sleep grit from it as his other hand slapped at the night stand behind him. Eventually he came up with the alarm clock he'd been looking for and he sighed at the glowing red numbers listed there. "It's _Saturday_," he whined to himself and put the clock back with a huff. It didn't matter now, though; he was awake.

Pulling himself to his feet, Duo grabbed the blankets up off the floor and began to straighten them out. He sighed when he got a good look at the one that had been the closest to Rattrap's paws; it had more than a few holes shredded into it. With a roll of his eyes, the braided boy began to remake his bed, carefully tucking each of the blankets in and spreading the comforter over the top neatly. The pillows went next; each was fluffed and put into its proper place and then he pulled the comforter over those as well and straightened the blanket until there wasn't a single wrinkle.

Bedroom back in order, the boy stumbled his way into the living room and through to the kitchen. The grey-furred annoyance came back, winding his body around his legs and trying to trip him. Duo resisted the sudden urge to kick him and instead sighed, "What do you want?"

Rattrap mewled. As if he actually understood the human, he ran over to the bowl that Duo left out for him food at the far end of the tiny kitchen. It was empty, save a few kernels left. The boy frowned and shook his head. "I didn't think you'd eat through all of that in a night…" He opened one of the top cabinets and took out the bag of food he'd picked up when he'd decided to take the cat home last week. Rattrap dived onto the food almost before he'd finished pouring it. Duo had to laugh a little at that, a little bit of a smile crossing his lips.

Sinking down to sit on the floor, Duo carelessly put the food bag on the floor beside him and ran a hand down Rattrap's back. He didn't even lift his face from the food but he began to purr loudly. "Yeah, I can relate," Duo told the cat with a stronger smile. He scratched gently behind the cat's ears, feeling his spine and rib cage underneath the dark grey fur. Rattrap really wasn't so bad looking of a cat, he thought. His fur had the faintest of grey stripes to it, that weren't visible at all when he was wet, and it was short and silky when kept clean. Now that he'd gotten all the bugs off of the cat, it wasn't scratching constantly. One of its ears had a big chunk of it missing, true, and his tail was a little scraggly in places. But somehow he'd managed to miss the "mangy" part of being a stray. Duo was glad for that. Having fleas was bad enough, losing one's hair was worse.

"I get a bit cranky when I don't have food, either," Duo found himself telling the cat as he continued to pet him. His good ear cocked back towards him. "You and I aren't so different, ya know?"

The boy shook his head and laughed at himself, "Of course you don't know. …Maybe I'll tell you about it one day."

He was just about to climb to his feet when Rattrap looked up and mewled at him curiously. Duo settled back down on his bum and leaned back onto one hand while his new flat-mate turned around and curiously sniffed at his pajama bottoms. He tilted his head to one side, watching as the cat hesitantly crawled up onto his leg and then into his lap. Unable to smother it, the boy chuckled a little when the cat's long whiskers brushed against his stomach and the noise caused Rattrap to freeze temporarily. Duo sobered, eyes lift and felt a grin tugging at the edges of his mouth.

"Oh? I'm not allowed to laugh, am I?" He asked him and, as if in response, the cat put his white-socked paws upon Duo's pecks and leaned in to rub his face against his master's jaw.

"Wouldn't you know it, my first kiss." Duo winked at the cat, which blinked its green eyes up at him and then dropped back down to all fours in his lap. That was a lie, of course, but how would the cat know that? Duo shook his head; a grievous error for all in turn. The cat's ears suddenly perked and it turned its head towards the same hand which it had clawed earlier. The boy watching him frowned, unsure where it was going, until the animal suddenly dived for his hand.

"Gyah!" Duo lifted the hand up quickly, only to find that that was _not_ what Rattrap had been after at all! The tug on his hair alerted him to something quite a bit more dangerous and he scrambled to his feet, jerking the brown rope of hair away from and out of the cat's clutches. "OK, no! Bad cat!"

Once he was on his feet, Duo pulled his braid over his shoulder to examine the ends of it, frowning at the bit of cat saliva glistening on one of the plaits, as well as the bunched and loose pulled hairs going everywhere. "This." He stated, bending down over the put-out seeming cat and holding his braid just out of reach, "Is not. A chew a toy."

The cat blinked at him and eyed the braid; it obviously wasn't listening. After a moment of staring at the animal, Duo sighed and stood up straight. It was pointless to argue with a cat, he knew that, and he scratched his head idly as he yawned. "It's too early for this," the boy muttered to himself, and turned to jerk open the refrigerator door. He managed to pour himself a bowl of cereal, coat it in milk, grab a spoon and make it into the living room without any further cat-related incidents. Flopping back upon his well worn and wonderfully soft couch, Duo reached one foot forward and pressed the large, red "power" button on the TV remote that was in its normal spot on the coffee table. Brilliantly coloured and utterly pointless Saturday morning cartoons greeted him cheerily and almost immediately the boy found his spirits beginning to perk a bit. He _loved_ cartoons.

There were plenty of people out there who would tell him that he was "too old" to watch these sorts of shows… Duo even had to agree with them a little. Yet there was something about being able to watch the little stuffed-animal looking characters walking around talking about friendship and hope and happiness that made life just a little more bearable. He liked the ones best that were had silly villains and nonsense stories, rather than the more serious-seeming "boy's" cartoons. Duo didn't quite understand the appeal in super-charged fighters beating up super-charged villains and everyone ranting about how powerful they were.

And though he'd been living here for months, now, it once more occurred to him that _he_ was able to sit on a couch he had bought, watching that TV he had paid for, in an apartment that was warm and comfortable and clean and _his… _and just how amazing that truly was. Eating his own cheerios, to top it off. Duo shoveled another gigantic spoonful of the grain-based breakfast into his mouth and munched on it, much the same as the cat had done with its own food earlier. If anyone had ever asked him what he thought Heaven would be like, he would have described this.

Two months ago he wouldn't have considered that this would have ever been his.

The war had left a lot of people at loose ends and Duo hadn't been an exception to that. While proud of himself for his part in bringing it all together, the days after that New Years Eve had been filled with confusion and uncertainty. Until Howard had helpfully offered him a permanent position with the Sweepers, that was. Duo smiled at the thought of his old friend and laughed around a mouthful of food at a mad scientist on his show who had inadvertently reminded him of his friend.

They had set about cleaning up all of the old debris from the space battles, a job so enormous that it still wasn't complete to this day. Those had been good times, Duo thought, some of the best… except when it hadn't. Cereal finished, he put the bowl down on the table and didn't object when the cat hopped up to drink the milk.

Watching the cat, Duo's face fell a little as he remembered the scrap yards he'd helped to fill. Though the work had been plentiful, the money decent and the company great, Duo had always hated to return to colonies after a "junk run." Out in space he could just look at the debris as piles of scrap. He fought with them, cursed at them, and forced them to go the way he wanted them to go so that they could get them inside to break apart and sort. But when you were standing inside, with nothing to fight with except your own conscience, and looking down at the piles upon piles of mobile suit parts…

_Most_ of the suits from space were mobile dolls, but not all of them.

Duo flung his arms over the back of the couch and tipped his head back. His eyes went back to the television and its soothing, nonsensical fantasy world. The boy couldn't help but crack a smile at a really bad pun. Soon he found himself laughing again and the memory of the corpse's face withdrew from his mind.

The flashing colours and cheery jingle-esque songs woke him up enough so that when someone knocked on his door a few minutes later he was able to answer it without resorting to "Mr-grounchy-pants-mode..." as Sally had so helpfully named it. A little wary of the sort of person who might come knocking on a person's door just before six in the morning in _this_ neighborhood, Duo got to his feet slowly and checked the peep hole before he moved to undo the locks. Much to his surprise there was a slicked-back black head of hair whose owner was just short enough that only the top of his head could be viewed. Duo knew that ponytail.

He pushed the chain back and unbolted the door lazily before pulling the door open to reveal the rest of Chang Wufei, partner and annoying-person-who-calls-at-insane-hours-of-the-morning. "… It's five am."

"I'm well aware of that," the Chinese man growled, "and there is a cat drinking from your cereal bowl."

Duo followed Wufei's gaze to the coffee table where Rattrap was still quite happily downing the milk he hadn't drank. Offering the sight a shrug, Duo turned back to the other boy and quirked a brow. "Yeah, it is. Uh… what's up?"

"You weren't answering your phone. We're on assignment."

"My phone didn't go off," Duo replied helpfully and finally moved aside so that the smaller boy could enter. Wufei stepped into the room carefully, eyes wary of the dark apartment as if something (possibly the cat, who his eyes kept returning to) was going to jump out of the gloom and bite him. He looked almost disappointed when the dark shapes within were nothing but furniture. "What's going on?"

"I can't tell you here."

A frown crossed Duo's lips even as he entered the bedroom to find some clothes. He glanced at the bathroom as he passed it, wishing he'd taken a shower the night before; with the way that Wufei was acting it didn't seem as if he was going to give him the time to take one now. Neither was he terribly impressed with the other boy right now. The scene he'd witnessed the night before replayed in his mind and he thought about asking about it… maybe this had something to do with that?

Before he could say them the words died on his lips. It was more than a little catty to ask it that way, and certainly not the sort of way he wanted to start a conversation with the touchy Chinese boy. That would only go badly, Duo knew, and so as he shrugged on a sweater he tried to find a better approach, "Can you at least tell me where we're going?"

From the other room he heard Wufei respond: "L4, at the moment. If you want to know why check your text messages."

"That would require knowing where it is…" Still muttering to himself, Duo wormed his way out of his pajama pants and into a pair of blue jeans before he stopped to think about it. Uniform? … No, Wufei wasn't wearing his. Where the hell was his phone?

The boy buttoned and zipped his pants and then went about to find the stupid device. He hadn't yet managed to buy or install a vidphone, as the complex he was at hadn't yet added them to their list of supplied amenities. It had to have been the last complex in the country to do so, but Duo wasn't complaining as there was a tendency for those sorts of contracted services to be very expensive—at least this way he had his choice of cell plans and didn't have to worry about what he was wearing when someone called.

That he hadn't heard the phone go off was very odd indeed. A light sleeper by habit, Duo usually woke up at the first sound of something strange in his apartment. The first night with the cat had been absolute hell because of that… and yet the phone had never woken him. The one logical conclusion lead him right back to his nightstand and then he dropped onto his knees and looked under the bed. The little black box-like object was there, dark as pitch, and he reached forward to grab it. It'd probably fallen there when he'd taken the tumble off the bed that morning.

The boy sighed to himself when he realized that he hadn't plugged it in the night before. Trying to turn it on just confirmed that it was, in fact, quite dead. He rolled his eyes at himself and stuffed it into his back pocket. "How long?"

"It depends. Did you find it?"

"I forgot to charge it last night." Duo got to his feet and set about pulling some of his clothes, including a uniform, from his dresser drawers. The familiar sound of Chinese cursing came from the living room, only slightly masked by the insane singing of the cartoons he'd left on. "Got a cab waiting?"

"Work car," Wufei replied shortly; the TV shut off. The bag he kept for long assignments, a green-grey rucksack from the war, was stuffed at the top of his closet. Duo had forgotten to repack it in case of emergencies, but he thought it best not to bring that up. Instead he quickly stuffed some clothes into the bag, an extra pair of shoes and his amenities from the bathroom. Another stop at his nightstand gave him his wallet, which he shoved into his pocket and headed out into the living room.

Duo threw the now stuffed rucksack on the couch, startling Rattrap, and he bent to take the bowl up off the coffee table. As he headed into the kitchen to clean it, Duo noticed that Wufei was looking about the small living room with an expression of awe on his face. "What?"

The boy stiffened. Duo crossed into the kitchen and washed the bowl clean as quickly as he could. He absolutely wasn't going to leave his apartment with an unwashed bowl of milk lying about! If he leaned forward just a little, Duo realized that he could see Wufei in the living room beyond, face yet again an unreadable mask. He smirked faintly to himself, and when the Chinese boy noticed him, he shrugged.

"Nothing," Wufei finally answered, "Are you ready?"

"Just a minute."

Duo poured another bowl of food for Rattrap and filled his water bowl. For a quick moment he wondered what on earth he was going to do about the cat… and then shook his head. There were ways of dealing with it and this was obviously important. Back in the living room, Duo threw on his jacket, grabbed his rucksack and slipped his shoes on, "Alr—fuck, wait."

Wufei visibly winced at Duo's language but didn't object. "Twenty bucks says that he hasn't had his coffee yet," Duo thought to himself as he dug a car charger he'd bought for his phone out of a small cabinet. "OK!" he said aloud and grabbed his keys off the shelf by the door, "Now I'm ready."

He paused outside the door for Wufei to get out, then shut the door on Rattrap's desolate mewl. For a moment Duo felt guilty and he hesitated on locking the door. Then Wufei barked out "come on!" from the stairwell and Duo turned the key in the lock. After looking around for a moment, he checked to make certain that his spare was still hidden with some gum over the mantle of the door and then turned to follow Wufei down the stairs.

Moments later they were in the army green jeep that any Preventer could use with the proper paperwork and heading towards the nearest airport. The minute Duo had gotten himself settled Wufei had thrown a pile of manila folders into his lap with two curt words: "Mission brief."

Duo nodded and plugged his phone in before he opened the one on top and began to read.

++//\\++

Relena wasn't sure why her pillow had suddenly decided to smell of cigarettes, but it did. Cigarettes and mint, she corrected herself when she'd pressed her face further into the stuffed object and taken a good whiff. An unusual combination, really, and the woman groaned faintly in displeasure. That wasn't enough to force her eyes open, however, or to even allow her to register shock around the thumping headache that was currently pounding between her ears.

Instead of turning away from the stench, she buried her face further into it and pulled the heavy comforter a little higher over her head to try and drown out a strange, incessant tapping noise coming from somewhere in the room with her. "Go away!" she called out to the bodyguard that was thumping at her door. Work could be damned for another five minutes, so far as the Vice Foreign Minister was concerned; it wasn't often that she bellowed such things out at anyone, much less Mike or Gareth, and she fully expected them to come barging in at any moment to see what was wrong.

The tapping stopped as soon as she yelled and in that minute-long respite the girl almost managed to drift back into slumber-land. Then the noise began again and she growled. Sitting up, the woman grabbed her foul smelling pillow, chunked it at the noise without looking, and then flopped back down, face first upon the equally smelly mattress and buried her head in her arms.

Much to her surprise the tapping stopped with a grunt.

Around the headache wormed the thoughts that there was someone in the room with her and that she would never again stay at this particular hotel if all their beds smelled like this. Really, you would think that they would have a better cleaning staff for all the good those five stars did them. Why was there someone in her room?

Relena lifted herself upon her elbows and opened her bleary, sleep clouded eyes. The light caused her headache to double its efforts and as such thinking became far too much work for casual use. Yet… it did distantly occur to her that when she'd fallen asleep the night before her bed had had a headboard.

The clatter of porcelain near the bed caught her attention. Relena lifted one hand to her eyes to rub the sleep from them as she sat up further onto her knees. There was a blurry, human-shaped blob in the corner fiddling with what appeared to be an equally blurry tea set placed in a room that was… not her hotel room. Reality snapped home in the manner of an instant and the Vice Foreign Minister clutched the comforter to her chest.

The room was drab, though comfortably warm, with old water-stain marks splashed across the ceiling and down the half-wallpapered walls. There were still some cracks in the plaster and the molding of the lit fireplace and her bed was nothing more than two mattresses stacked on top of one another on the floor. Her pillow currently resided on the floor near a half-closed laptop.

The girl started as the human-shape in the corner turned around and headed towards her. She quickly backed away three paces, almost to the edge of the bed, before her eyes reached his face.

"Heero?"

++//\\++

The Chinese man came towards him still in a huff and cup-less. An immediate alarm spread through Duo's body, worse than what he'd felt when he'd realized their mission—Wufei without coffee was not going to be a pleasant experience. "What? Was the line too long?"

They'd arrived at the terminal just in time to hear the first announcement stating that their flight was going to be delayed. No amount of "this is important Preventer business" or flashing of badges was getting them around it, either. Briefly the two had considered stealing a shuttle, yet had only gone so far as planning out the heist—there was a reason why the flight was delayed and trying to fly in the conditions described actually _was_ suicidal, not just ill-advised. In the end, they'd been forced to wait it out with everyone else. And every minute more was another minute that the Vice Foreign Minister was missing.

That was a hard lump to swallow. Duo tried not to think about it, instead focusing on the smaller boy beside him. Wufei's glare might have actually been enough to freeze Hell, had someone killed the boy right at that moment and sent him down there. "How can Starbucks be out of coffee?" the Chinese boy snapped as if Duo would have the answer to that. "This is insane. Why did they even bother to open? You would think that if your _coffee shop_ had the ill-taste to be _out. of. coffee, _that opening the doors anyway would just be pointless and cruel!"

"They probably still have tea…" Duo offered. He was rewarded with the blackest look imaginable. The braided boy turned his head away so that Wufei wouldn't see him smiling. It was all he could do not to laugh. As soon as he could control his voice, he couldn't help but adding, "This is why I never drink the stuff. Too easy to get addicted."

"I'm not addicted."

"Really? Because the fact that you're frothing at the mouth over the lack of an addictive substance really hints otherwise."

"Maxwell," Wufei warned.

"Y'see, there's this little thing called 'caffeine' which is present in most coffee mixes. It tends to drive people crazy if they don't get it, if they let themselves become dependent on it to, say, wake up." Duo grinned out at the crowd around them. He kept his voice light and cheery, despite that the other boy about him was quite noticeably grinding his teeth. It really was too easy.

"It's OK, you know," Duo said seriously when Wufei didn't reply. He turned to him, daring to drop a hand on the shorter boy's shoulder as he affected his most concerned look, "Lots of people are caffeine addicts. You just have to be willing to admit it."

"Maxwell, if you don't get your hand off of me—"

"Ah, sirs…?"

Both the agents looked up at the rather sheepish looking stewardess standing not too far away. "Why is it that people always seem scared to approach us?" Duo couldn't help but wonder. He didn't bother to ask, however, and instead just tilted his head and flashed her a smile that caused most women to relax in his presence. It was amazing what the right body language could do.

It worked almost immediately, and the woman's own lips drew into a small smile and her posture became more confident. Duo didn't miss one of Wufei's hands tightening into a fist beside him. Thankfully, that was hidden by his coat and the woman never noticed. "My supervisor asked me to tell you that there should be a weather window for your flight in eight hours. We're doing all we can to get your flight out at the first opportunity."

Wufei muttered something in what sounded like Chinese and so Duo jumped to reply first, "Thank you for telling us. Are you sure there's nothing before that, though?"

"I'm sorry," the stewardess shook her head, "These freak storms happen sometimes in the early spring. We're really doing the best that we can."

"Thank you," Duo nodded to her, resisting the urge to sigh until she was gone. Wufei glared up at him and, feeling more than a little irritated himself, he snapped, "What? If there isn't anything she can do there isn't anything she can do. You saw the satellite as well as I did."

Wufei made a rude noise. "I'm going to find some coffee."

"Good luck," Duo called after him. He watched the back of the shorter man's jacket for as long as he could see it in the crowd milling around the airport. "Please let him find some coffee," he muttered to himself once he was certain Wufei was far out of hearing range. Tipping his head back against the wall he was leaning his hips against, the boy let his eyes turn towards the windows lining the outer wall of the terminal. It really was coming down hard now. When they'd first gotten to the airport there had only been the faintest of sprinkles and nothing to indicate the horrible storm that had grounded all the flights minutes after they'd stepped into the terminal itself. Now they were stuck in crowds of angry, snappish people, screaming kids and harried staff. It had been all Duo could do to keep Wufei in order… Maybe that was why he kept pushing at the other boy's buttons. The more that Wufei was angry at him, the less likely Wufei was to take it out on anyone else.

The mischievous side of himself couldn't help but note that it was more than a little fun to push those buttons as well.

Above all, however, they couldn't risk attracting attention to the station they were headed for. Most of the ESUN knew that Relena had gone there the day before and they only had a few hours, maybe a day, before the girl's disappearance would have to be made public. It was imperative that they keep that silence about it as long as possible… and that they reach L4-RS01 as soon as they could.

It took a long minute for Duo to realize that his cell phone was ringing. When the distinctive pop-music finally reached his ears over the din of the crowd, Duo dug quickly through half of the multitude of pockets on his person before he finally found the compact device. Flipping it open quickly he pressed it to one ear, "Yello?"

"Good morning!" Quatre piped from the other side. Duo couldn't help but smile at the cheery, disembodied voice; the blonde had always been a morning person and today, despite the weather, seemed to be no exception. It was nice to have someone else around that was so easily cheery.

"Morning, yourself… not so sure about the good."

"What's wrong?" Cheery, yes, but Quatre was also easy to sober when he needed to; it was really easy to see why he made such a good business man. Duo chuckled faintly and shook his head. As much as he wished he could confess the entirety of the situation to the former pilot, it simply wasn't permissible. Especially in so public a setting.

"Nothing!" Duo laughed and knew that Quatre would see through it, "'Fei and I just got called out for some stupid little mission. Why the local police can't handle something this small I don't know, but they're begging the big shots to take it off their hands. You know how it is."

"OK, I'll keep my eyes open for anything big hitting the fan," Quatre responded. The corner of Duo's lips lifted and he knew that Quatre hadn't lost his edge, even after so much time had passed. "Can you tell me where?"

"Nah." That, at least, didn't have to be changed. "Listen… I know it's rude of me to ask, since it's your vacation and all, but I had to leave pretty suddenly and I didn't have anyone I could leave Rattrap with suddenly…"

"I'll make sure he's taken care of."

"Thanks, man," Duo smiled softly, "The key's over the mantle. It's stuck there, so you might have to get Rashid to look."

"Oh ha-ha-ha, I do you a favor and you bring up the short jokes. I see how it is." They both laughed and some of the tension fell out of Duo's shoulders. "Do you know how long you'll be gone?"

"If I'm lucky only a few days… but I don't know. You know how they like to drag these things out."

"Mmm… I see," Quatre muttered to himself. Duo's smile wavered a little and his brows knitted together for a moment.

"Well, at least now you'll have Trowa to yourself."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Quatre asked suddenly. Duo couldn't help but be a little surprised at how defensive his friend sounded and he shrugged, despite knowing that Quatre couldn't have seen the gesture. At that moment, Wufei returned bearing a large, generic-looking coffee cup and a similar one of smaller stature. He handed the small one to Duo, who took it and sniffed to find that it was chai tea. It seemed that this was the morning of surprises.

"Nothing," he finally responded to Quatre and indicated the phone with his eyes when Wufei gave him a questioning glance. "Just that you've been wanting to see him again; go catch up or something."

"Oh… right."

Duo couldn't help a laugh at that, even around his mouth-full of tea. It was surprisingly good, and Duo briefly spared a thought as to what coffee shop had the balls to compete with a Starbucks in the airport. Whatever it was, they were certainly getting business right now. "So. Go see him. I'll see you when we get back, K?"

"Right. And… good luck," Quatre replied. Though the boy had tried to shove as much happiness as he could into his voice, it still fell far short of the mark and Duo closed his phone with a worried frown. Wufei was still giving him a curious look, though he doubted that Wufei would admit to that if questioned. Instead, Duo just sipped his tea as mulled over a response.

"Quatre," he finally told him and was met with a grunt. "Trowa's in town remember?"

"Ah, yes." Wufei responded and sipped his coffee. With all that needed to be said, said, the two stood beside one another, drinks in hand, and watched the rain pour down.

++//\\++

She sat on the bed and glared at him. He sat on the floor and glared at her. The tea between them grew cold, the laptop monitor went to sleep, the fireplace crackled and the light outside the bedroom window began to grow. In the distance a bird made its first, tentative chirps to the morning air.

Ever since she had entered politics, Relena had had her fair share of staring contests. As childish as it sounded, even politicians ran out of words eventually and were reduced to staring one another down until someone cracked. She tried to convince herself that this wasn't any different than that, yet the thought kept intruding that the man she was currently staring at had a horrible case of bed-hair , was wearing his pajamas and _bunny slippers_.

Heero Yuy wore bunny slippers.

Relena's eyebrow twitched as she resisted the urge to giggle. No. No, she would _win_ this contest, goddamnit! At least the tea that he had provided her had made some headway into relieving her headache. When she'd first woken up it had been a monster fit to devour her brain; now it had softened to a faint whisper at the back of her mind that didn't make any sense until she concentrated on it. It also helped, in a strange sort of way, that she was currently seeing red.

"You poisoned my chocolates."

"Laced," the boy corrected her with his usual straight forward manner. "I laced your chocolates."

Her eyes narrowed a little further and his did as well. Ignoring that answer, she continued, "To kidnap me."

"Yes."

Had it been anyone else, Relena might have been shocked. Instead she was livid and broke eye contact as she shot to her feet. "You _kidnapped_ me!"

Heero's face turned up towards her, the faintest (and most infuriating) of smirks upon his lips. "I believe we covered that point already."

Relena, the Vice Foreign Minister of the Alliance, the Queen of the World, the Queen of the former Sanc Kingdom— Relena, who had been in politics for years now and faced down men older than her own father, and who had an argument and rebuttal for _everything_—screamed a single note of frustration and turned away from her captor. Stomping over the mattress to the other side of the room, Relena turned an about face when she reached the wall and stomped her way back. This time she stopped before him, bare toes a mere hair's breadth from the tea set, and pointed a finger at his unflinching face.

"Gyah!" She told him quite verbosely and then followed this by making a series of squeaky, high-pitched noises. When her incomprehensible tirade ended, she closed it with a huffed "Grruhh!" and marched right past him, out the door that seemed ready to fall off its hinges at the slightest touch.

Thankfully it was made of sterner stuff than it seemed, and the door stayed on well enough that she was able to slam it behind her. It opened almost immediately and the bunny-slippered kidnapper followed her at a sedate pace. Relena paid him no mind, instead walking down the carpeted, decrepit hallway of what looked to have once been a fine hotel.

"Where are you going?" He asked and Relena couldn't help but note the boredom in his voice. She found a stairway and headed down it.

"Away from you!" The girl responded with a huff. Much to her surprise, he didn't seem terribly interested in stopping her. She reached the landing unmolested and took a moment to look around the lobby of the ancient hotel. It was an odd sort of style… the typical western-style hotel features were everywhere and yet there was something just slightly _off _about it that Relena couldn't quite put a finger on. It was as if someone had tried to imitate a style they weren't native to.

She located the double doors that looked as if they would lead outside and began her way across the lobby just as Heero caught up to her. He walked with her to the doors and stopped a few feet away while she tried to open them. They were stuck or locked, and Relena would bet on the latter. After she'd tugged at it for several minutes and beat upon the wood in frustration, she turned to her captor.

"Open the doors, Heero."

"Why should I?" He countered and leaned upon a wooden column that she wouldn't have had the guts to touch; it looked as if it would fall away at any moment.

"Because!" It took her a moment to come up with something that sounded even half-way logical, "I have work to do, Heero."

"I know that." The Japanese boy replied evenly. He stood straight, then, and slowly advanced on her. "Have you forgotten that I kidnapped you?"

A frown tugged on Relena's lips. As he took a step forward, she took one backward. "You can't be serious."

"Why not? I went through all this trouble, didn't I?"

"Heero, I know I told you to kill me during the war—I was a different person then." The look in Heero's eyes caused Relena to gulp nervously and she resisted the urge to squeak when her back met the wood of the doors. No matter what they looked like, both were very solid and very much locked.

Heero shook his head, stopping mere inches from his prey, and leaned in until their noses had almost touched. Relena could feel her chest growing tighter, her pulse pounding in her throat. Whether it was fear or… something else, she did not know, but her eyes were glued to the boy's and she did not even dare to blink.

"You work too hard."

++//\\++


	4. Don't listen to me, listen

**CHAPTER FOUR**  
_** Don't listen to me, listen…**_

Despite the late show the night before, Trowa was up at half-dawn as usual. The circus was an interesting occupation, certainly, and the larger it became over the years the more hassle it was to keep running. Thankfully they'd never added rides to the whole ensemble, or else they'd be just short of an amusement park and zoo combined. As it was, Trowa rather felt that they had the 'zoo' concept down perfectly.

Wake at five and be out the door by five fifteen—never bother with a shower at this time, because you'll just be dirty again in a moment. Feed the predators first because they're the ones that could kill you, and then move on to the slightly more docile creatures. When that's done, muck out the elephant stalls. Once that chore is down, you're free to shower and grab whatever breakfast you can keep down after such a disgusting chore.

The morning was practice time, followed by lunch, followed by more practice time and costume preparation. Animals had to be trained, laundry done, repairs made, everything had to be cleaned, and in the midst of it all was an entire colony of people ready to spring drama at your doorstep.

Trowa tried to remain separate from the group so far as the drama-mill was concerned but every now and then some bit of gossip or another liked to come and nibble about his ankles. It was rare that one actually managed to bite him in the ass.

He'd been in the kitchen urging some sausage to cook just a _little_ faster so that he could return to working with the lions—one of whom was getting a little testy and had had the nerve to growl at him the night before—when Catherine had entered the trailer fresh from her morning gossip circle. He expected her normal tirade about the current goings-on in the circus camp and had thus chosen to tune her out until a very familiar name cropped up.

"What was that, Cat?"

In true female form, his sister replied, "You weren't listening to a word I was saying, were you?"

"You mentioned Quatre," the teen shrugged and pressed the sausage just a little. It hissed and smelled wonderful and reminded him in its own, teasing fashion that it wasn't quite cooked yet and he'd probably regret eating it half raw. Bother.

"Mhm, though I'm not sure that I should tell you now, if that's how it's going to be!" Catherine opened the refrigerator door as she sing-songed at him, perfectly aware that her teasing would be grinding on his nerves. He'd long since decided that she enjoyed tormenting him just as much as he enjoyed aggravating her with silent patience. They both knew one another entirely too well.

Eventually, her need to fill him in on this bit of information conflicted too widely with her frustration at being regulated to background noise. The woman opened her mouth to continue and, joy-of-joys, his sausage was done! Trowa put the twin links on the bread and egg that had been waiting, closed the sandwich up and joined Catherine at the kitchen table.

"I was speaking with Mishelle this morning—she's finally starting to get over that bought of flu, by the way…"

"Good," he said and bit into his sandwich.

"Anyway, she saw the group that came to talk to you after the show. But, more importantly, she saw another duo sneaking around the trailer as well—" Catherine cut herself off to snicker a little. She shook her head at herself, "Pun not intended."

"Duo and Quatre?" Trowa guessed, eyebrows rising in unison… not that she could have seen one of them.

"Mhm!" Catherine's expression was positively feline as she smiled over her orange juice. "Or at least, that's what I think from Mishelle's descriptions. There aren't too many teenage boys with two-foot braids running about with short blondes… and Quatre does seem to be featured quite often in those gossip rags she reads."

"Hn," Trowa stated and frowned at his sandwich. It remained delicious but suddenly there wasn't any interest within him to finish it. He sighed and stuffed another bite into his mouth, anyway—he'd help no one by going without.

It was one thing to have your suspicions about having seen an old friend in a crowd, it was quite another to know that they'd been correct and that said friend had, apparently, tried to seek you out. Trowa wasn't sure what to do with this information and so continued with his current course of action: eating. Across the table from him, Catherine hid another smile with her juice and pretended not to be watching her brother; neither of them was fooled.

"You should call him," she suggested a moment later. Trowa chewed his sandwich. After there'd been no response for a reasonable period of time, Catherine gave a sigh and drained her cup. She got to her feet, moving across the tiny space to rinse the glass in the sink. "Trowa, I know I never… approved… of your friends from the war, at least not then… but it wouldn't hurt to call—especially not if he's going to slink around here at night, trying to talk to you."

"You don't know that he was," Trowa rolled his shoulders in an easy shrug. That she'd gotten that much of a statement from him was a victory in and of itself. The boy shoved the final corner of his meal into his mouth and crumpled the napkin which had been holding it. An easy toss landed the wrapped in the recycling bin marked "paper" and then he rose to his feet in an easy, fluid gesture.

Catherine sighed faintly and shook her head at whatever her internal council was cooking up. Rather than stay and hear her arguments as to why he should be more social, Trowa walked himself to the door and slipped through it into the daylight beyond. He paused outside the door to stretch. It was nippy, to say the least, and the sky above bore promise of rain; Trowa didn't think that it would until later that night and it was little worry when they had the big-top. Still, rain meant smaller crowds, especially when they were based on the outskirts of town and not in a formal arena.

For a long minute Trowa merely stood there, arms stretched above him and hands resting upon the back of his neck. All around him, the circus breathed; its members bustled to and fro despite the early hour, lugging boxes here, carrying bags there. They chatted and trained and gossiped and… lived. It was a large family, in its essence, as closely knit as any he'd ever heard of. Despite being a hundred people strong, everyone knew everyone and was closely involved in one another's lives… even Trowa.

One of their youngest members, a young girl named Cassidy, stopped to wave at Trowa from across the yard. He felt the faintest of smiles cross his lips as he raised a hand to return the gesture. Cassidy clutched the bag of dog food she was holding to her chest with a giggle and ran off to her family's trailer. Her mother was a bearded lady, wonderful woman, and her father the resident school teacher; Trowa often saw Cassidy training her tumbling act with the rest of the Three Ring's handful of children. She worshiped Trowa.

A year ago he had refused to so much as speak with Cassidy, or any of the children. It had been too much a risk to get involved in the lives of any of the circus folk, he had told himself, they were a cover for his mission and nothing more. Even Catherine had been included in that, he was sorry to say. When he had lost his memory and been taken in as Catherine's brother, Trowa had still not been able to form bonds with the rest of the circus folk. It had been like a block laid somewhere deep inside of him, shutting off his ability to form emotional attachments to these people; it was a block that had persisted until he'd finally regained most of his memory, months after the war's end.

Strangely, it had been Cassidy's cheer that had brought him fully to himself again.

Trowa still wasn't certain if he was thankful for that or not. The boy shook his head clear of his woolgathering and turned; he had chores to see to and practice to attend.

++//\\++

The city just wasn't the same without Duo there to share in it. Quatre looked off the balcony of the seventeenth-floor restaurant at the skyline stretched out before them and wondered what he was going to do with the rest of his week. Duo's job was important, whatever it was, and the boy couldn't begrudge him walking out to take care of… whatever the problem was. But it did put a damper on the weekend. So, he sat upon the fairly chilly—and for that reason, _private_—balcony of Chez Lumiere, lingering over the remains of a hardly-touched luncheon and staring at the moody clouds hung over the city. It was still nice to be here, he couldn't help but think, for the simple fact that artificial weather—no matter the kind—was much nicer than the controlled and predictable weather functions of the colonies.

Quatre lifted his nearly forgotten cup to his lips and grimaced at the taste of the liquid inside. Mint tea was wonderful when it was hot, but once it had gone cold the after-taste was repugnant. He set the cup aside and gave a sigh, turning his head to look back towards the window where a member of the waitstaff would surely appear as soon as they noticed him.

There were other people upon whom he could call while he was here, he knew; not the least of these was the clown that they had gone to see the night before. Quatre couldn't explain the hesitation he felt towards that line of action, he only admitted that it existed. When the waitress appeared in the window in her smart black and white uniform, Quatre flashed him a smile and nodded faintly. The door opened and the girl scuttled across the cold-lashed balcony to his table with a smile plastered upon her pink-painted lips.

"Don't know how you can stand this weather, sir! It's right to catch your death out here, it is," the girl chided and clasped her hands before her, a black-bound pocket book caught between them. "Is there anything else I can do you for?"

"No I… actually. You wouldn't happen to have any desserts, would you? And some fresh tea…" Quatre glanced at his sorry cup of mint; he should have finished it sooner.

"Mm, that depends on what you're in the mood for," the waitress bobbed a little as she stood and searched her memory, "Cook's got a quaint little dish cooked up in back called Clafoutis. 'Tis a muffin what's topped with strawberries and some sort of sweet-tasting batter, plus a few little extras he keeps to hisself; I haven't tasted anything like it! If you're in the mood for something a bit more traditional-like, there's the crème brulèe… Ooo! And if you like chocolate, and some'at is a bit warm, we've got a new dish of profiteroles pored over with hot chocolate sauce."

"That last one," Quatre decided immediately on hearing it and smiled. Something warm would definitely do him some good—even if he was being incredibly bad by eating it at all.

"Right-o! One dish of profiteroles and some hot tea comin' at you," the waitress announced, making a quickly jotted note in her pocket book before she skittered back to the doors. Quatre's gaze followed her out and then he turned back to the railing. From his seat, he couldn't see the street below, but even if he had walked to the railing and looked down, he wouldn't have been able to distinguish their car from any of the others. He wondered if Rashid had gotten back yet.

Judging from the fact that his phone had yet to ring, Quatre suspected that he had not. Regardless, the man drew the small device from his pocket anyway and flipped it open. There weren't any new messages at all—which wasn't surprising as only a set number of people had his private number. A small icon in the corner informed him that he did have email, however. Though highly conscious of what Rashid was sure to do if he caught Quatre checking anything remotely work related, Quatre punched the button to bring the inbox up and was surprised to see a note there from Relena's personal account.

As he opened it, the waitress returned and replaced his cup of tea. Quatre flashed her a grateful smile then turned his attention back to the phone. He reached for his cup and took a sip, careless of how hot the liquid was.

_Dear Quatre,_

_I've been trying to contact you by phone but it seems you're rather busy. After seeing that report this afternoon, I can understand why! I'm on my way to L4 now and was hoping that we could get a lunch in together while I'm there; there's more to discuss than just business. Please get back to me as soon as you can._

_Best Wishes,_  
_Relena_

Quatre winced a little. With the faintest of sighs, the boy pushed the "reply" button and began the painstaking task of typing an email on the awkward, compact keyboard. He really wished that Rashid had let him keep his blackberry…

"Master Quatre," the devil broke into the relative silence of the balcony; Quatre jumped.

His cell phone beeped in his hand to indicate that it had quite helpfully sent his half-finished e-mail and Quatre turned to face his bodyguard, companion and, at current, _nanny_. "Hello Rashid. I didn't realize you were back."

"It didn't take long," Rashid replied and eyed the cell phone with what could only be described as a predatory glare. "Master Quatre, you weren't harassing the secretaries again were you?"

"No, Rashid," the boy sighed in return, just as the waitress's return was heralded with an indignant squeak. Did everyone in this place gain ten points in stealth?

The waitress regarded Quatre with an expression that warred halfway between a scowl and a pout. "Harassing poor secretary girls are you, now, sir?" She put the plate of delicious looking pastry down in front of him just as Rashid moved to take the chair opposite his employer.

"It isn't like that," Quatre promised with a faint laugh. He was rewarded by a broad grin that reminded him faintly of Duo and the girl nodded.

"Good, good," she stated, crossing her arms before her with all the air of a mother hen. Quatre's eyes darted to her name tag—Alice, it seemed. He'd have to remember her.

And that was when the bomb dropped, "Harassing one's secretaries is bad enough—but to do it when you're just engaged! I'd hate to hear what your Lady would think."

"Ah—excuse me?" Quatre stumbled, blue eyes widening dramatically. Across from him, Rashid was looking quite appropriately as if he'd been hit by a bus. Alice's face fell just a little and her eyebrows scrunched together in a way which caused them to run together in a single, slightly bushy line.

"It was in the papers this morning, sir, wasn't it? Your engagement."

The cliché went that in moments of true horror or bliss time would freeze and your heart seize in your chest. Quatre had never believed in such things until this very moment. Mouth hanging open wide enough to catch a carp (should such creatures learn the ability of flight, of course), Quatre turned to stare at his companion who looked equally flabbergasted.

"… You… didn't realize it'd gone public, then?" Alice asked with due concern for her suddenly speechless guests. She wondered if she was about to be fired again—it wouldn't be the first time she'd gotten in trouble for having a big-mouth with customers.

"That… would be an understatement," Quatre managed to squeak. His gaze fell upon the chocolate dish he'd so been looking forward to. Suddenly it didn't seem to matter how bad it was for his body—he picked up one of the chocolate oozing cream puffs and bit into it. Whatever he was about to face, he would face with a sugar high!

++//\\++

She was stuck in an amusement park and she was not happy. Relena stared out the window of her designated bedroom and tried to pretend that she wasn't merely sulking—she was _pissed_. Oh yes, absolutely. Not that yelling had gotten her anywhere but over Heero's shoulder, being lugged back upstairs to her bedroom. Relena was also trying to pretend that her cheeks were red from being hung upside down and not from the path her thoughts had chosen to tread.

He'd only dumped her on the bed, collected his laptop, told her that he was going to give her some time to think, and then left her alone in the bedroom. Relena tried to believe that she hadn't inexplicably hoped for more. Rather than think on it, the girl reminded herself that he had kidnapped her, destroyed any and all chances she'd had of helping out the situation on L4, and that being alone with him for the first time in years was not a turn on, damn it! Her hormones were turncoats and she should have them court marshaled.

The view outside of her window was a dreary one, and not at all welcoming by her standards. There were rides covered in an array of chipped, fading paint and rust, half-collapsed game booths and decrepit attractions galore. Somewhere in the middle of the expansive graveyard of leisure was a rickety looking Ferris wheel, and far beyond that Relena could just make out what appeared to be the gates of the entire structure. The walls surrounding the place where high and she couldn't see anything past them but unmarked greenery and mountains. It had taken her a long time to figure out where she was, but eventually Relena had noted some half-faded and cracking symbols painted upon the signs below and realized that this was Japan.

Well, it could be China, she amended, but why would Heero take me to China? Besides, she didn't think that they had a wealth of abandoned amusement parks in that country.

Of course he would take her to a country where she couldn't speak the language. Relena gave the faintest of sighs, both blessing and damning her luck. Heero was smart—she'd known that much for years and yet this was the first time she was actually sorry for it. He wouldn't be able to hide her face from the public, were she able to get out of this place… but if she knew him, they were probably in the most remote place he could find in the overcrowded, island-based country.

No, she would have to convince him to let her go.

There was a knock at the door and briefly Relena considered ignoring him. Her stomach growled and she sighed, "Come in."

The door opened with protest. In the reflection from the window, Relena watched as Heero leaned against the door jamb. He was watching her as intensely as he always did; she shivered—why did it always feel as if he had her under a microscope?

"There's dinner downstairs," he said after a long moment. "The dining room is to the left."

Relena turned her head only slightly enough to acknowledge that she'd heard him. They stared at one another for a long moment and then he took a step backward and shut the door. The girl's shoulders sagged a little and her gaze returned to the sunset-lit amusement park. If this was so wrong, why did it feel so right?

++//\\++

"Master Quatre, calm down… you're scaring the cat."

Quatre glanced behind him at Rattrap who was, in point of fact, not at all frightened and currently licking himself on top of the baby grand. The blonde threw an annoyed look at his all-too-cool companion and growled faintly. The paper in his hands crinkled as his fingers tightened around it again and threatened to leave another set of permanent creases through the picture splashed across the top of it. His eyes were drawn once more to the desiderated photo of himself and Relena, taken several months ago at a restaurant somewhere in the L2 cluster. Quatre knew he should have been able to place it, exactly, but the anger in his mind kept him from being able to accurately recall the last time he'd seen the Vice Foreign Minister.

He didn't think it had been at that restaurant at all.

In a huff, the boy threw the paper down upon the nearby sofa and stalked to the floor length windows lining the wall of the common room, where he pressed his forehead to the cold-frosted glass and glared at the city below. "Rashid!" he heard himself whine, "They're saying I'm _engaged_ to _Relena_. Do you have any idea how badly this is going to hurt us?"

"It's just a rumor—a rumor that they're publishing as fact," Rashid reminded him. He poured tea and set it out on the table, expecting Quatre to drink it. That was Rashid's answer for everything these days. "They're going to have to retract it."

"Or what, Rashid?" Quatre answered, suddenly weary of the world. He repeated himself, "or what? Do you expect me to sue if they don't? I really can't see anyone taking a threat of that seriously. Who the hell _sues_ someone over falsely proclaiming an engagement? That would only make my reputation look even worse, and the more I deny it the more that people start to question _why_ I'm denying it, and my grandparents and uncles start questioning _why_ I haven't taken a wife, and then all of the family is breathing down my neck and their _friends_ are sending their _daughters_ to _meet_ me and suddenly _everyone_ is trying to get me married off because I'm too old now—"

"Breathe," Rashid interjected, appearing like magic beside the boy. Quatre sucked in a breath, realizing just as suddenly that he'd been ranting like a lunatic—or worse: like the teenager that he technically was. The teenager, he reminded himself, that he couldn't afford to be.

"Sorry, Rashid," Quatre threw an apologetic smile up at his companion, shoulders slumping and head hung in shame. The boy rubbed his temples with one hand and shuffled his way across the room to collapse in a chair at the table. After a moment, he realized that his tea had been sat at the opposite placing, so he reached across for it.

Rashid was still standing at the window, watching him impassively. The man slowly brought one hand up to his chin to rub at the beard growing there. "So," the man asked after a few minutes and half of Quatre's cup had gone by, "why aren't you married?"

Quatre choked on his tea.

Thumping his chest, the boy coughed and sputtered and stared at Rashid in disbelief, "Rashid!"

"I'm serious," he replied with a frown. Though Rashid's tone was light, Quatre could tell that the man meant every curious word that now fell from his lips. "Why aren't you? You're seventeen now, and you've been running the corporation alone for a year. Your father didn't arrange your marriage for you, but most of the boys your age have already entered engagements, at least, by now. Considering your social position, it would only make sense for you to begin courting the _idea_, at least."

"Not you, too, Rashid," Quatre frowned into his cup, finding it quite a bit less comforting than it had been moments before. "Why is marriage such a big deal, anyway? I'd rather… no. Forget it."

Putting his cup down upon the table, Quatre turned that same frown upon the elder man, who looked as if he were ready to object. "I need to get out of here for awhile." He stood up sharply and turned to grab his jacket from the back of the chair he'd thrown it at when he'd entered the room a half hour before, "I'll have my cell on me."

Before Rashid could protest, the boy grabbed the keys to the car from the side table and was out the door. And, for the first time that Quatre could remember, he didn't try to follow.

++//\\++

The circus tents under a tumultuous sky didn't look like the same bright, decadent things the stereotype called to mind. The scent of rain was heavy in the air, now, and Quatre wondered briefly if the weather casters had been wrong about their not being rain expected for that afternoon. Too bad he hadn't brought an umbrella with him. He locked the Mercedes up and trod the short distance from half-sodden parking ground to the area of game booths and snack stands set up before the big top. There weren't any customers about at this hour, but there were plenty of circus folk out and about, no doubt setting up for that night's performance. A few of these persons cast Quatre strange looks as he walked around the area but none of them tried to stop him. No one, that was, until he tried to go behind the big top.

"Can I help you, ssson?"

The owner of the voice appeared to his left—a man who looked alarmingly like a snake both in bone structure and coloration, with the latter thanks to the hundreds of intertwining serpentine tattoos which covered his body. Or was it merely one tattoo that spread everywhere? Quatre would have to ask to find out and he found the question sticking like peanut butter to the roof of his mouth. "I'm looking for Trowa Barton," he stated instead and clutched his jacket just a little more about his lean form.

The man regarded him curiously for a long moment and then nodded. When he opened his mouth, Quatre could see that he'd even had his tongue split down the center; the boy shuddered. Fortunately, the snake-man didn't seem to notice and instead nodded, peering behind Quatre to the backstage beyond. "I think…" The man drawled with a faint hiss in his speech thanks to the cosmetic surgery, "That he isss with the children. Come."

One long, claw-like finger beaconed Quatre to follow as the serpentine man slid behind him and into the rows of tents and trailers that made up the Circus's living quarters. Quatre did as he was told and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his coat as far as they would go. He hadn't been cold that afternoon but now he was positively frozen. Even the knowledge that it was most likely a psychological problem than a true physical one didn't help to keep the cold at bay and he found himself wishing that he'd thought to grab his gloves as well.

The back area of the fairgrounds looked remarkably different by day than it had the night before. Despite that, Quatre was able to pick out the trailer they'd identified that night as Trowa's—and, by approximation, the trailer that he and Duo had hid behind to watch the group of Preventers corner the clown after his performance. "It isss not often that our Trowa hasss friendsss visssit," the snake-man was saying, unconscious of the fact that Quatre had barely been paying attention.

The blond jumped to attention at the sound of the other man's voice and took a moment to register what had been said. It was a question, of course, but stated in such a way that Quatre could have neglected to answer if he hadn't wanted to. The boy found a smile encroaching upon his lips, "It isn't often that I'm able to see him; we lead very different lives."

The snake-man laughed, nodding his head, and Quatre wondered how often it was that any of the circus-folk got to see the friends or relatives they had outside of their job. Probably not often, with how much the circus was on the move. It couldn't be a lonely life, for you were surrounded by your coworkers constantly… but Quatre did wonder how they dealt with it. Suddenly he felt a little sorry for the ever-smiling entertainers—they were never allowed to be unhappy.

"Here," the snake-man stopped so suddenly that Quatre nearly ran into him. Muttering an apology, Quatre stumbled away a step or two and peered around the man's wide, tattooed form. The sound and sight of children was what hit him first. He couldn't understand why he was so shocked to see them there; the circus performers weren't likely to all be chaste or unmarried and he'd even seen the children helping their parents out in the performance the night before. Yet, somehow, the idea that there were _children_ in the circus hadn't quite dawned on him until now.

They were garbed as any other children would be—large T-shirts, ratty pants, shorts, tanks… Work clothes, he would guess, from the amount of stains and tears upon them. Each child was working on a routine or skill—most were tumbling, some were juggling with beaten and worn practice pins, and others were taking turns walking across low beams suspended a few inches above the ground.

After he'd had a few minutes to get used to the sight, Quatre realized there really weren't as many of them as he'd initially thought. They were an energetic lot and all their movement and laughter and cavorting about had made them seem a larger group—he counted only about ten, possibly eleven. In the middle of this chaos was a taller boy currently overseeing the kids on the beam.

Duo had been right; Trowa had certainly… grown up. Quatre felt his cheeks flush a little and tried to hide his embarrassment by coughing into his hands—it went unnoticed by the crowd at large. A pair of emerald eyes slid towards him, however, and had Quatre not been watching for it he might have missed the slight smile lift the edges of Trowa's lips. A blast of icy wind shook Quatre from his daze and he jerked his head to the side to issue a mandatory "Thank you" to the snake-man who had shown him the way, only to find that the man had already disappeared.

"That's good, Cassidy—if you can keep that up for a few more days, we should talk to Jonathan about starting you on the low wire," Trowa was saying to one of the girls by the beam. Quatre returned his attention to them in time to ascertain that "Cassidy" was the name of a thin-as-a-reed, blonde pre-teen girl running about in a leotard and sweatpants. Just looking at her made Quatre's body temperate drop a few more degrees and he shivered again. He supposed that the physical activity was enough to warm them, but at the moment he was more certain that their parents were crazy for letting the kids out dressed as they were.

"Do you really think so?" Cassidy beamed up at Trowa and bounced in place. He nodded, though his attention had already turned to a little boy who was cautiously making his way across the beam with his arms extended like wings to either side. Quatre smothered a chuckle at the face the boy was making and began to pick his way across the training area to where the beam was set up on the other side.

Trowa nodded, "But don't take my word about it. Your parents have the final say on that."

"They won't disagree with you, Trowa," the girl giggled faintly and rubbed one sneaker-shod toe against the ground. "You know what you're doing."

"We'll see," Trowa just nodded and watched the boy reach the end. That one Quatre felt a little sorry for—the look of pure, unadulterated relief at being off of the balance beam was one that was hard to miss. Trowa clapped his hands together three times and the whole crowd came to a halt. "Alright, that's enough practice for today. Get everything put up and go finish your chores—we have a show in a couple hours."

The announcement was met with the usual disappointment shown by children everywhere when chores were mentioned. Only Cassidy seemed not to care—she tossed another grin at Trowa and then ran to help the jugglers collect their batons and put them back into storage. Something inside of Quatre's chest seemed to curl into a hard knot and settle at the base of his throat. He didn't like it one bit, whatever it was, and he jumped when a hand fell onto his shoulder.

The blond boy looked up into a pair of green eyes and felt that knot grow just a bit bigger. He gulped inexplicably.

Trowa didn't say anything; he arched one thick brow and then released Quatre's shoulder. Turning, the clown moved to pick up the balance beam himself. He hefted it over one shoulder, his arms flexing to show off just how much well-toned muscle was packed under his skin, and headed off towards one of the storage tents nearby. His free hand gestured that Quatre should follow him. After a moment spent staring, Quatre did.

++//\\++

The PA announced that they would be docking soon and Duo dropped the reports back into his lap with a sigh. Wufei was in the bathroom and he took the chance to close his tired, sore eyes. The flight to L4-RS01 was long and boring and he'd spent every minute of it trying to work his way through the case file. Much to his annoyance, Duo had only just realized that most of it was a reiteration of things he'd known about Relena and her past for years—it was just that some agent, somewhere, had felt the need to type it up in semi-biographical fashion and fill the entire thing with ten-dollar words. Duo had half a mind to find out who had written the overly detailed report and strangle them. With wool yarn. Because nothing quite said "I hate you" like making certain that an enemy's strangulation was extra painful and itchy.

"Are you finished yet?" Wufei asked as he dropped back into the seat to Duo's left and fastened his seatbelt. Duo was about to question that when the pilot asked that all the passengers tie themselves in. Half-heartedly wondering if Wufei was psychic, Duo sat up and did as told. He picked the file back up and waved it at his partner.

"This," he made certain that Wufei had glanced at the manila folder being waved under his nose, "Was entirely unnecessary. You could have summed that up in about three sentences."

"It's better to be well prepared, Maxwell. You never know what information you might need," Wufei replied and rolled his eyes. He shoved Duo's hand away.

Suspicious now, Duo's eyes narrowed at the Chinese boy. After a moment, he leaned in and whispered, "You wrote this report, didn't you?"

"Of course I did," Wufei snapped, "I actually knew the subject, after all; if you bothered paying more attention to our assignments you would have seen her file when it came up last month."

"Why did it come up last month?"

Obviously that was not the right question to ask at that moment because Wufei's eyes managed to narrow even further. Duo wondered if the boy could even see out of them right now. Then, suddenly, Wufei deflated and shook his head. Sitting up straight, the boy let his head roll back to rest against his seat. The anger was gone, but now Duo felt himself being regarded with the expression that he'd long since decided scored the highest on his mental list of "Top Most Annoying Expressions of Chang Wufei:" the lofty, holier-than-thou, "why are you such a moron" scowl.

"Duo. We spent all of last month trying to plug and find the source of a massive security leak discovered in her household. Her office was bugged, her computer had a hacker's imprints all over it, there was evidence that someone had been sneaking into her house…"

"Well, yeah, but I never saw any paperwork on it, and it wasn't as if it was ever solved."

"No, it wasn't. And now someone has kidnapped her."

"You know, I did manage to correlate that myself, thank you," Duo scowled and felt a further stab of irritation when he noticed the smirk that crossed Wufei's lips. There were days when he really wanted to punch the other man… Shaking it off, Duo turned his eyes towards the cabin window and stared out at the side of the colony they were currently docking in. A little turbulence hit the shuttle as the pressure around it shifted, but the docking procedure went as well as could be expected when a commercial pilot was in charge. It was on that point alone that Duo missed the days of military efficiency.

"See, reading that was good for you. You've already learned a new word." Wufei got up before Duo could hit him and jerked Duo's bag out of the overhead compartment. He tossed the worn rucksack into Duo's lap and then pulled out a similar sort of duffel back which he slung over his own shoulder. Duo followed in kind, after he tucked the file into his bag for safe keeping, and together they exited into the terminal. A quick flash of their badges allowed them to bypass security, and within minutes they were out the door.

They grabbed a cab, whose driver was a little surprised at hauling two boys with little more luggage between them than a pair of drifters might have towards a five-star hotel. At least, he was surprised until they both dragged their official jackets out of their respective bags and put them on; then he was just nervous. Duo felt the slightest pang of guilt when he noticed the nervous glances the driver kept shooting into his rearview mirror. He didn't blame him in the slightest, of course—when it came to figures of lawful authority, _everyone_ thought they had something to hide, even when they didn't.

Soon enough they were at the hotel and Duo stopped to hand the man his Preventer's business card, waiting as the man swiped it, signed the ticket and added the most generous tip he could without facing a lecture about it later.

Immediately upon entering the hotel, they were set upon by a rather flustered looking concierge. She wobbled like a penguin in her three-inch stilettos and too-tight skirt and the smile on her face was just a little too strained to be happy. "Sirs! So good to see you," the woman began, holding out a hand which only Duo took to shake. Wufei leveled his best "no nonsense" glare at her, and succeeded in making her wring her hand after Duo had released it. Duo elbowed his partner, successfully gaining the man's attention, and the woman regained her ability to speak, "You're… here about the incident, yes?"

Duo grinned and nodded, "Yeah. Say, you haven't been mentioning that about to your staff—"

"What? Oh!" the woman shook her head and made a gesture to indicate that they should follow her. The men were forced to pause one step for every two of hers, just to keep her wobbling figure in front of them. She lead them towards the elevators, "No, no; most certainly not! Need to know basis and all that… but I'm afraid we won't be able to keep it out of the grape vine much longer…"

"We understand," Duo replied before Wufei could say anything terribly damning. The elevator gave a cheerful "bing" after the concierge pressed the button, and the bronzed doors slid open to reveal a classy, tasteful interior. The three of them piled into the small box of a room and she pressed the button for the proper floor. Once the doors had closed, the woman fanned herself with one hand and cast another, nervous grin towards the pair of them.

"I'm really so glad that you came so quickly. The media began sniffing about early this morning… the police chased them off for the time being, but…"

"But someone is sure to have seen us entering the building," Wufei interjected and sighed. Duo couldn't help but agree with him on that point; in all likelihood there were members of the press housed in the modest motel across the street that were assembling like vultures even as they spoke.

The trio managed to make it up to the floor Relena's suite was on without any interception from other hotel guests—that in itself was a small miracle that Duo was highly grateful for. They entered the hall together, but neither agent needed the concierge to tell them where the suite was: an inexplicably large, intimidating man in Armani was standing in the hall beside the suite door with a cigarette pressed between his lips and a maid begging him to put it out. The nearby fire alarm had been jerked from the ceiling.

"Mr. Gaiden!" The concierge gasped. That got the man's attention and he lazily turned his face towards them, one dark, brick-like hand rising to take the cigarette from between his lips. "Sir, you _know_ we have proper areas for that."

Duo doubted that such nagging would have worked had he and Wufei not been there. As it was, Mr. Gaiden eyed the two other men and then slowly bent to press the cigarette out against the soil of a plotted plant that stood beside him. The maid made a "tsking" noise under her breath as she snatched the stump up and threw it into the garbage bag on her cleaning cart nearby. After casting a dark look at the dejected bodyguard, the maid grabbed her cart by its handle and stomped off down to the next suite lining the hall.

"You must be Michael Gaiden," Wufei stepped forward, effectively taking the reins from Duo's hands. Duo let him, much more content to let Wufei handle the guys who looked as if they could easily take on a Leo bare-handed and win. It wasn't that he was scared, Duo reminded himself, only that he knew better than to risk provoking someone who could crush his head like a grape. Why was he letting Wufei do the talking again?

The man nodded and opened the door to the suite, waiting outside of it for the two Preventers to enter ahead of him. Wufei walked through the entrance without hesitation, and a moment later Duo skittered in behind him. Mike followed and shut the door in the concierge's face.

Three men looked up when they entered: a somewhat pudgy, but strong looking white man and two equally twiggy Arabian men both dressed in the uniform of the local law enforcement. Based upon his readings from the file Duo concluded that the white guy was Gareth Schwartz, Relena's other bodyguard. _Ex_-bodyguard, if they had anything to say about it after this. Gareth was sporting a rather nasty looking black eye and a bruised lip and suddenly the reality of the situation hit Duo like a square ton of bricks—whoever could take out a guy like Gareth meant serious business… and Relena could be in very real trouble.

"What happened, in your own words," Wufei demanded as he chunked his duffle bag down beside the door. Duo followed suit with his rucksack and then moved to the coffee table where there were a few other police reports scattered about. All of this was evidence gathered in the last few hours since Relena had gone missing, things that they wouldn't have gotten yet. Wufei remained standing, arms clasped behind his back and glare leveled towards the sore-eyed bodyguard. To his credit, Gareth didn't even flinch.

"We got in at about twenty-twenty-five. Mike checked the apartment, top to bottom. Rele—Miss Darlian said she wanted some shut-eye and went directly to her room. We could hear her telly on for a few minutes, probably the news, since she rarely misses it, and then she went to bed," Gather began. He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and looked miserable enough that Duo managed to feel a little sorry for him. The man obviously cared about _Relena_ and not just about the fact that he'd bunged up his job; that much was apparent.

"Mike and I settled in, watched some telly ourselves. Got a bit peckish at about… oh… twenty-one… eh… would you say thirty or so, Mike?"

The darker man nodded from his place by the door. He didn't seem inclined to offer anything more than that. Duo raised his eyes towards some masking tape he'd noticed marking off a section of carpet nearby; he frowned and picked up a pile of surveillance photos. "Twenty-one-thirty," Gareth repeated with more surety. "Called some room service, cute little waitress brought it up. She left, we ate… I think the food was drugged."

"Why do you think that?" Wufei asked as he crossed towards the taped area. There was a stain on the carpet from something… they'd already tried to clean whatever it was but it would take more than a perfunctory wipe or two to get the marks out. Wufei didn't touch the spot, but he studied the placement between it and the two bedroom doors.

"'Cause Mike and I don't just fall asleep in front of the TV, eh?" Gareth spat, suddenly defensive. One of the man's hands balled into a fist and Duo raised his eyes back to him for a moment. The other men in the room all stiffened, waiting for Gareth to do something, but the man only settled back on to the couch and shook his head. The fist uncurled and he shoved his fingers through his shaggy brown hair. "But we did."

"So how did you get that," Wufei made an idle gesture towards the man. It seemed to take a moment for the man to realize what Wufei had meant, but when he did he shook his head.

"My memory is fuzzy on this bit. I guess I didn't get as much of… whatever it was as Mike did, 'cause I remember waking up somewhat—I thought I heard something. My eyes weren't too clear but I saw, or I think I saw, that same waitress again. She was in our room and had the Minister slung over her shoulder and was doing something with the food cart. I said… something. Don't know what. Got up… The girl smacked me! I wasn't expecting it! Then she did something with her foot and…"

Gareth lifted his hands helplessly, shaking his head.

"As you can see," one of the police men interjected and nodded to the photos in Duo's hands, "We caught the woman in question three times on the cameras, but her back was always toward them."

"You're certain this is her?" Duo found it his turn to do the asking, and he frowned down at the photo.

"Absolutely. We questioned the entire staff and they all stated that they never saw a woman matching this description before in their lives."

"Then how did she get the food tray?" Wufei snorted as he joined Duo at the couch. Duo handed the photos over; the image of the compact, auburn-haired woman's back thoroughly burned into his retinas. There was something… off about it that he couldn't quite place.

"Tied up one of the waiters in a broom closet down the hall. We found him this morning and questioned him ourselves," the other officer replied. "She used chloroform on him, probably from behind—he never saw her and we caught none of it on tape."

Duo frowned and shook his head at the files. He hated sitting still so long and found himself pacing, "And you're certain that the boy isn't lying?"

"We've no reason to assume that he is." The officer replied after a moment of hesitation—he sounded a little shocked. Behind him, Duo heard Wufei give the faintest of bitter chuckles.

"When a government official is concerned, gentlemen, you have no reason to assume that anyone is telling the truth," Duo stated with a smile. Wufei looked up, and for the first time Duo thought he saw something resembling respect in his partner's expression.

++//\\++

"You were at the show last night," Trowa stated as soon as he'd dropped the beam down in its accustomed place inside the storage tent. He dusted his hands off though they weren't dirty and turned around to look at the boy standing awkwardly at the tent's entrance. He noticed how Quatre's hands were fiddling with the ends of his jacket, pearly white teeth worrying his bottom lip. Odd; he'd never seen Quatre nervous about seeing him before. Trowa marked the observation for thought later and waited out the boy's answer to his unasked question. To add further confusion over the situation, Quatre's cheeks turned pink and the boy frowned.

"I didn't realize you'd seen us," the blonde replied softly. He was watching the children who were busy putting the batons away on the other side of the tent; Cassidy in particular, who was overseeing how the younger children stacked their equipment. Yet another strange thing, Trowa decided, and found himself a relatively stable stack of boxes to lean against. He had no intention of taking Quatre anywhere beyond this point without knowing what it was the other boy wanted.

When Quatre didn't elaborate, Trowa explained, "I didn't. Someone saw you and Duo sneaking about the back area."

Quatre's cheeks turned a little darker and the stain of red spread to his ears. One of his hands let the jacket go and Quatre coughed into his fingers before running them through his wind-mussed hair. "Yeah… we were going to come and say hello, but… we saw the others that were with you."

"Ah," Trowa nodded; it was a perfectly reasonable response, so far as he was concerned.

"Yeah," Quatre looked up from where he'd been staring at their feet and offered Trowa the faintest of smiles. "So… it's been awhile."

The wind rustled the tent walls around them, sending a cold blast through the tent-flap and chilling everyone inside. A few of the kids whined about how cold it was, dumped the last of their burdens and fled to whatever warm place they had waiting for them. "Hey, come back here!" Cassidy cried after them, with no results.

Trowa broke his eyes from Quatre's and turned his smile instead upon the girl. Cassidy was a little firecracker when she wanted to be, and now she bent over the mess of batons, shaking one uselessly in the general direction of the runaway children. After a moment, she stopped and began to pick up the mess, grumbling under her breath the entire time. He bent to help her.

"Thanks, Trowa," the girl smiled up at him, apple blossoms staining her cheeks in much the same manner they had Quatre's not a moment before. Not for the first time Trowa became aware of how much Cassidy reminded him of the boy now standing silent and cold behind him. Both were kind and perky when they had reason to be and both tended to see the lighter side of things, rather than focus on the negative. Unlike Quatre, Cassidy had no issue ranting and raving and screaming to get her point across and she'd been known to throw a punch or two when the mood struck her. Yet, on a purely physical level she resembled the boy as well; striking blonde hair, short stature, big blue eyes. She was shivering.

"You should go inside," he told her, "It's getting cold out here and you need to bundle up."

"But—" Cassidy cut her protest short when she caught the look he was giving her. Slowly the girl nodded her head and stood with a sigh, "Ok, Trowa." The girl headed for the exit but from the corner of his eye he saw her stop and stare at Quatre. Something was muttered, then, and before he could question her, Cassidy ran off.

Quatre crossed to him and bent to help him with the last of the batons. The boy was blushing hard enough to give himself a tan, now, and Trowa frowned. He didn't miss the fact that Quatre's hands lagged over the batons, hesitating before each movement he made. Despite this, Trowa gave him time to think, waiting until they'd finished rebuilding the stack and stood up before he said anything. "You're in on business, then?"

"No," Quatre shook his head as he snapped back into reality. "No… at least, I wasn't."

Trowa sat on a box and made a small, noncommittal noise to encourage the boy. Quatre seemed to take that as an invitation and took a box of his own. The wind blew again and faint pattering noise from above alerted them both to the fact that it was now beginning to rain. The blonde turned slightly to look out the tent-flap at the rain-streaked scenery beyond. "Some things came up… I don't think I'll be able to stay as long as I thought."

Trowa nodded; again, a perfectly reasonable statement by his way of thinking. "Your company needs you."

"Yeah," Quatre sighed faintly and frowned at the rain. His hands curled over his knees, fingers clutching the fabric of his pants. "I had hoped to get to spend some time with you… and Duo."

This felt exactly like the same conversation they'd had a year and a half ago, the day after the war had ended. There hadn't been many words exchanged between them, but for every word which _was_ said a thousand meanings unfolded in the back of Trowa's head. Quatre had spoken quietly of the business he had to run, Trowa had mentioned briefly that Catherine was his family, now. They had parted, and neither had called or written. They used every excuse they could come up with to avoid one another and only heard from one another via round about methods—Duo or Relena or occasionally Rashid; Trowa thought that Quatre liked to admit that this was what they were doing as much as he did—in other words, he wouldn't out loud. He wondered what it was that had driven Quatre into breaking their stalemate now.

The seconds ticked by into a minute and neither had said anything. Trowa managed to briefly consider that this was exactly the sort of situation another person might have considered awkward when Quatre opened his mouth again and startled them both with a nervous laugh. The single short note turned into something a bit deeper and the blond bent over his knees as he worked whatever it was out of his system. Quatre pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes and let his elbows settle on his knees; had it not been for the smile on his lips, one might have thought him weeping. Perhaps he was.

When the laughing stopped, Quatre wet his lips and turned his head enough that Trowa could see one sparking, all-too-shiny blue eye from beneath the blond screen of hair dangling over Quatre's face. Trowa leaned forward enough to run his fingers into Quatre's hair, pushing the bangs back away from that cherub face and as he did the smile the boy was wearing flickered… then vanished.

It had seemed a wholly natural thing to do, but suddenly Trowa wished he hadn't moved at all. His fingers were still twined into those golden, silky locks when a disturbance at the entrance got both their attention. One of the circus workers, wearing a parka, came through the tent flap and shook himself before he noticed the two sitting so awkwardly beside one another. Trowa slipped his hand away and Quatre jumped to his feet.

Mouth flapping, the boy inched towards the door, moving in a half-circle around the newcomer; then he looked towards Trowa and his eyebrows knotted in confusion. Quatre shook his head, turned, and ran out into the rain.

"Ah… fuck, man, I'm sorry," the worker managed to mutter a moment later. Trowa ignored him.

++//\\++


	5. Bad ideas are usually contagious

**CHAPTER FIVE**  
_** Bad ideas are usually contagious… **_

It wasn't that Wufei snored—though he did—nor was it the strange environment he was in; it wasn't even the way that the air conditioner coughed and wheezed and sounded like it was going to _explode_ every five or so minutes before it settled back into a faint, mechanical whine. Duo lay on his back in the middle of the queen-sized motel room bed and counted the dots on the ceiling, trying to keep himself from thinking about what was really bothering him.

In all honesty, he was used to this by now. Eventually he moved one hand blindly to the nightstand beside him and retrieved his phone. The LCD screen cast a blue hue upon his face and chest, the light gleaming off of a simple golden cross hung about his neck, and Duo scrolled through the various features the phone had to offer. In the other bed, Wufei grumbled something incoherent, snorted and rolled over. Duo flipped the phone shut.

When it seemed like Wufei had settled back into sleep, the braided boy sat up and stretched his arms above his head. There was no real point in lying around like he was, except that he didn't want to disturb Wufei. The other boy was hard enough to deal with in the morning without his being sleep deprived to boot. Duo made a mental note to make certain that there was coffee in the room's two-cup coffeemaker ready and waiting before Wufei got up.

Utilizing every precaution against unwanted noise, Duo slipped from his bed and took his phone with him to the bathroom. Along the way he paused briefly at the side table where they'd put the case files the night before and selected one. He shut the door behind him and latched it before he switched on the lights. Though blind for a moment or two, Duo once more flipped the phone open and pulled up his world-time converter. He waited until the spots had cleared from his vision before choosing the right colony and glanced at their current time. When the information loaded, he nodded, cleared the screen and pressed his speed dial.

Once the phone began to ring, Duo plopped down upon the floor and folded his legs in front of him. The phone went between his ear and shoulder as he opened the case file and started to rifle once more through information he'd already memorized.

One ring. Two rings. Three rings. Fou—"Hello, Duo," a tired, though happy, female voice crooned through the speaker. She yawned a little.

"Did I wake you?" He asked, carefully pitching his voice so that it wouldn't echo too much.

"Nah. It's only four-in-the-morning," she chuckled airly.

Duo winced, "Ah, shit. Sorry, I thought it said 'P.M'."

Despite the hour, Hilde didn't seem to mind—but she never did. There was something about that sheer amount of loyalty from his oldest, dearest friend which made Duo's heart warm and his fears ebb a little. "I'm sure you did," the girl growled and followed it with a chuckle that belied her anger. A masculine voice behind her grumbled something, to which she responded, "Duo. You met him. My last birthday? With the braid."

"Is that Fredriko?" Duo asked, unable to help himself. A fair amount of giggling and the rustle of covers followed his question; the voices were too distant for him to understand the conversation. He felt his cheeks warm a little and rolled his eyes, turning the page of the file he was reading. A picture of the stains on that carpet was presented to him in slightly enhanced black and white contrast. They'd learned earlier that the stains were from a single plate of food that had been carelessly dumped onto the carpet. Everything else from the cart was still missing.

"S-sorry about that, Duo," Hilde's voice came back, breathless and giggling.

"I called you at a bad time—"

"No!" Hilde cut him off sharply and then laughed, "No, Duo… Freddy has to take a shower anyway, don't you, Fred?"

Once more the voice in the background said something which Duo couldn't quite get and Hilde giggled wickedly into the receiver. Duo fought back a sudden pang of jealousy—though over what, he wasn't sure. "I really don't want to know why Freddy needs a shower do, I?"

"Pervert! He has to go to work."

"At four A.M.?"

"At five thirty, but we get up early," Hilde clarified and Duo could imagine her patient smile. "You have a pretty good sense of timing."

"Heh," Duo shook his head and he picked up another of the photographs—one of the mysterious waitress they had yet to identify. "I guess so."

"Can't sleep again, huh?" Duo frowned at the voice she used and found himself sighing. That seemed to be all the confirmation she needed, "What's up? The pills Sally gave you not working?"

"I…"

"Or you're just not taking them," Hilde scoffed and once again, Duo could imagine the way that her eyes rolled and the annoyed look she would now be leveling at her phone in place of him. He really missed her.

"I hate medication," Duo sulked. He began to flip through the various shots they'd gathered of the woman, or anything suspicious that they thought to be the woman in question. Whomever she was, she was good; the only few traces they'd managed to get her of her were only bits and portions of her body, and never her face. Too good.

"Duo," Hilde sighed, "You can't go on like this."

"Why not?" He laughed and then remembered himself—he cut the noise short and glanced at the door. The air conditioner coughed again but no other sounds came from the room beyond. More quietly, he continued over whatever Hilde had begun to say, "Why not? It doesn't happen that often."

"I'd call two to three times a month fairly often, Duo," his friend replied quietly. They'd had this argument more times than he could remember; it had begun during the war, when he'd been hidden away in her home and she'd first encountered sleep-deprived-Duo, and had lasted until this current day. He felt bad for always dragging her into this, but whom else could he talk to? He hadn't even told Sally why he couldn't sleep—just that he couldn't. Even then, he amended, he'd only done it under pressure from Hilde.

"I'm getting better," he argued, "This is the first time this month. Besides, I have a good reason. Re—" Once again, he had to cut himself off. The other end of the line went silent as Hilde patiently waited for him to make his excuses for this month's "good reason" for insomnia. Or rather, for not doing anything about his insomnia. "I just have a good a reason."

"Look, I just called because I—I needed to hear a friendly voice, OK?" Duo continued before she could object. It was pathetic and manipulative but it would probably work; Duo really didn't want to argue with her right then. He dropped the pictures back on the open folder and leaned back against the wall.

"You know you can always call me," she replied faintly. Yes, he did know that; Duo stared at himself in the bathroom mirror—the glass pane butted against the counter top and continued all the way up the ceiling to create a rather unusual perspective for anyone looking _up_ into it. Tired eyes, muscle stretched over a too-thin frame, the multitude of silver scars that ran all over his arms and bare chest. There were more on his legs and back and… everywhere. Usually he covered them up with as much clothing as possible, but in front of Wufei and the other pilots there wasn't any need to. Other than his few "favorites," Duo didn't even know where most of them had come from, they were just _there_.

Hilde was probably the only person not in their "teenager terrorist" club (or a doctor) who knew about those scars, just like she was the only one who knew about his trouble sleeping. Duo felt kind of sorry for her, in a way; her loyalty to him had kept a lot of men out of her life. Ever since the end of the war they'd been in contact more by phone than anything else. Yet, whenever he needed her, she was always right there for him—even if it meant interrupting a date. Most of the men couldn't handle the fact that she had a guy in her life who was more important to her than they were—until Fredriko. He'd appeared on the scene three months ago and he hadn't been intimidated by her "little brother."

It was funny. Until Fredriko had called him that, Duo had never known what to think of his relationship with Hilde. Somehow the stranger had put it into context for him. He was only glad that Fredriko seemed to be treating Hilde alright, because otherwise Duo would have felt incredibly guilty over how unfair the situation was to her. At least this way he could tell himself he had done her a favor by "character screening" her boyfriends.

It was a stupid lie, but it helped his conscience.

"How are things working out with Flintstone?" Duo asked, following his own train of thought. Thankfully Hilde didn't question the non-sequitur and seemed only too delighted to answer.

"Wonderful!" She gushed and then added in a whisper, "He's been staying with me a lot lately. I know it's only been three months but… I mean, he's really good to me, Duo. You should come stay with us a few days. You didn't get to spend too much time at the party and I really think you'd like him…"

"Heh… Maybe after we finish this assignment, huh? I have a feeling I'm going to need it."

"Oh! Where are y'all at this time?"

"L4," he shook his head, "You'll… probably hear why soon enough. I can't say much more than that."

"Right," Hilde was probably nodding. He heard the voice behind her again and once more she took her mouth from the receiver to say something. Duo tuned them out and shook his head at the pictures in front of him. Suddenly something clicked. Time. He began to lay the pictures out in chronological order, based upon the time count in the bottom corner of the camera feed.

Though unsure what he was looking for, other than once again noticing with growing frustration that they had no discernable features on the woman, Duo sighed. It had seemed like something important. "So, how long do you think you'll be there? It sounds big." Hilde had returned to the phone.

"It is," Duo muttered, teeth worrying his bottom lip. He hated that there was something obvious here which they were missing; that feeling of impatience with himself was only growing stronger by the minute.

"Ahha," the girl said after a minute. She was worried again; Duo mentally cursed himself. Why had he called her? It had seemed like a great idea at the time, but now he just felt like a selfish twat. "So, are you still running around with Quatre Winner?"

It took Duo a minute to realize that Hilde and Quatre had never really had much opportunity to speak even if it _was_ mostly Quatre's doing that had gotten Duo to save her life back in the war—not that he hadn't wanted to, he reminded himself as the guilt tugged at him, he'd just… frozen. He shook his mind free, "Yeah, I am, why?"

"Just curious. I was wondering if they'd set the date yet?" There was a plastic rustle and then faint chewing could be heard over the receiver. Duo rearranged two of the picture's he'd gotten out of order and something about the last one drew his eye. He picked it up and frowned at it with the distinct impression that he was playing _Where's Waldo,_ only there was no helpful side-illustration to indicate what Waldo looked like.

"The date for what?" He muttered and frowned at the corner the maid was turning around; more specifically, he frowned at the top of her head. Duo grabbed the picture that went directly before that one and flipped back and forth between them, one on top the other.

"The wedding, of course."

The ex—Duo's brain stopped. He hit rewind, stopped again, and then pressed play to hear that again. His dark eyebrows nestled together a moment as he considered what he remembered of their conversation. "Quatre," he began slowly, "is getting married?"

"They didn't tell you?" Hilde garbled her surprise around a mouthful of whatever she was eating—it sounded crunchy.

"Uh, no. No, that's a first." The photos he had been staring at hit the pile in front of him and Duo's eyes returned to the mirror above him. Why had Quatre neglected to tell him something like that? He tried to replay the last time he'd seen the boy, the night of the circus—Duo had chalked Quatre's nervousness up to seeing Trowa again. It had been clear as day that there was _something_ between the two of them back during the war, even if no one had stopped to speculate what. It was also obvious that the two had been avoiding each other ever since then; Duo had firsthand experience with that avoidance since he had played go-between for them for the first few months after that Christmas.

The chewing managed to sound thoughtful. Duo didn't interrupt it as he knew how important thoughtful chewing could be to one's mental processes and eventually Hilde reached her conclusion. "Well, it has been all over the media since yesterday. Seems like every news story has some angle on it; of course neither Relena nor Quatre have confirmed it. No one seems able to find them, so people are kind of assuming that they're together somewhere. There's even this rumor that they eloped."

"You've gotta be shitting me," Duo muttered, looking down at the files spread before him on the tile. That part was obviously untrue. Well, maybe. Duo frowned, "Hilde… can I call you back?"

"Yeah, sure. I'll be in the studio all day."

"Kay. And… thanks."

"Any time." Duo hung up and cast one last look at the photos he'd been messing with. Then it clicked: the exit sign.

++//\\++

A sudden noise jarred him out of his sleep. Wufei's hand reached automatically for the pistol he kept under his pillow; as his fingers touched the lukewarm metal he realized that all he was hearing was the TV. The Chinese boy groaned faintly and scrubbed at his eyes with one fist as he sat up. The sound on the TV was garbled with the speed that his partner was flipping through the stations and when Wufei opened his eyes he found the braided boy sitting upon his respective mattress staring at the TV with such an intensity one might have thought the device had suddenly grown legs and danced a hula. The smell of almond roasted coffee hit his nose just as the coffee pot on the side table gave a gurgle and Duo found whatever station he'd been looking for.

"Duo, what the hell?" Wufei sighed and flopped backwards onto his pillow. He put his hands over his eyes and wondered if there were anywhere on this colony to successfully hide a body.

"Shh!" Duo hissed, "Listen."

Though he was close to reaching for his gun a second time, Wufei was tired enough to actually heed the boy's command for once. It was some… news report, if you could call it that. Wufei found himself scowling as what had seemed at first to be a very professional sounding woman revealed herself to be nothing more than a gossip monger. Between the cartoons and this trash it was no wonder that Duo had so few brains rattling about in that pretty little head of his.

"Neither Relena Darlian or Quatre Winner has been available for comment about this recently discovered development, but the executives of the Winner Corporation, including two of Quatre's sisters, are very excited." The woman was saying. Wufei's scowl turned into a frown—that part didn't sound like the gossip she'd been spewing moments before. He took his hands away and peeked his eyes open at the indecently bright television monitor.

The newsroom switched suddenly to a recorded interview with one of the Winner sisters. Wufei didn't recognize her, but considering the sheer amount of siblings Quatre claimed there was little surprise in that. She seemed… "bubble headed" was a little too nice a word. "Well, it wasn't as if we weren't sort of expecting this," the woman—she had to be in her late twenties, though she was dressed in bubblegum pink and stylishly teenager clothing—giggled, "He's always seemed to be really interested in what Relena does and she's the only girl friend he ever brings home. They hadn't been able to see each other too much since that conference in…. what was it? Baghdad?"

The woman paused to twirl her blonde hair around one finger, smacking her chewing gum noisily into the microphone, "Yeah, but anyway, he was rather depressed. That's why he and Rashid—that's his personal assistant, you know—snuck out of here last Friday."

"So you believe that wherever he and Minister Darlian are, they're definitely together?" The all-too-toothy reporter asked. The bubble-head bobbed her head profusely.

"Oh yeah, definitely," she confirmed, "I wouldn't really worry about them, y'know? Quatre's real good about his work and he really cares. He'll be back to deal with the merger, I'm sure of it."

The station switched back to a in-station shot of their gossip monger, as Wufei now thought of her, and she grinned her extra-bleached grin, "And there you have it, folks! Confirmation of the affair from within the Winner household! Well, I think it puts a lot of minds to ease, especially after last night's sighting of Preventers at the Minister's hotel on L4."

The red letters "M-U-T-E" flashed up on the screen as the sound cut out. Wufei looked to Duo, who was already staring at him with an unusually somber expression. Wufei growled and surged to his feet to pour himself a cup of coffee. Whatever this was about, he didn't think he was going to like it.

++//\\++

The birds twittered outside the open double doors of the hotel kitchen. Heero had propped them both open with cinder blocks earlier that morning, once the light of dawn had broken over the mountain ridge and dispelled some of the mist. Even now there was still enough dew upon the ground to send up a sparkle from the fresh spring grass and leave a small wet stain on the hem of his pajama pants. He didn't mind that or the bits of soil and grass sticking to his bare feet, and lounged in the patio chair he'd drug out there and set up a reasonable distance from the bird bath and feeder.

The colourful little swallows were certainly pleasant to watch and utterly unafraid of him to boot. They dipped and dived and pecked and chased one another about, oblivious to the human watching them. Heero smiled, just faintly, and took another drought of tea from his mug. "There's a pot of Earl Gray on the stove, fresh. I put the honey on the counter next to it, and some sugar cubes," he said evenly when something in white entered his peripheral vision; the birds didn't care and the white spot startled.

Relena moved past the wall so that she was clearly visible in the doorway. Heero didn't so much as turn his head, but he watched her. Though he'd forgotten to grab either of her suitcases—and, he admitted, he'd been a little worried there would be some sort of homing device planted in one of them. Certainly that's what _he_ would have done, anyway—she hadn't seemed to mind the boy's clothing he'd provided her with. It would be comfortable, at least.

She probably didn't even realize that the faded, black-and-white plaid button-up she was wearing was his. The underwear and pajama pants were brand new, but he hadn't seen any reason to buy an excessive amount of shirts.

Relena pressed her lips together, eyes flickering between him and the display the swallows were putting on for them. Eventually she settled on the birds and he didn't blame her, they were beautiful. Just as he was beginning to wonder if they were in for another day of the silent treatment, she opened her mouth. "Why did you bring me here?"

Unlike her accusations the day before, her voice was quiet and reasonable this time. There was something underlying it which spoke of the power she'd always seemed to extrude. This, Heero thought, was the Relena he liked to see. "I told you."

"Heero," Relena let her voice trail off and sighed. Shaking her head, the girl turned and faded back into the relative darkness of the kitchen. A moment later he heard the faint clack of porcelain and metal and knew that she was making herself some tea. He set his cup aside and moved to drag up another of the patio chairs. When she rejoined him he had already resettled into his chair; she took the new one without comment and drew her knees to her in the seat.

The sun rose a little higher as they continued to watch the frivolity of the swallows, their radiant colours flashing adding just a little more of the spring to the air. Heero thought he caught Relena smiling and couldn't help but smile just a little himself. "You got an e-mail from Quatre, by the way," he heard himself say and her smile disappeared.

"You're checking my e-mail?" The girl's eyes cut like a knife and Heero raised an eyebrow. Was that really so hard to believe? He didn't think the question even deserved an answer, so he didn't give it one. Relena groaned when she realized this and slapped the hand not holding her tea mug to her forehead. "Heero! Do you… do you even realize how insane this is?"

Yet another question he didn't seem fair or valid. "Some would perceive it as stalking, yes," he didn't appreciate being treated like a moron. Her face fell, mouth gaping at the cold reply she'd received.

"That's would because it _is_ stalking, Heero!" She placed her mug upon the table between their chairs and let her forehead fall to her knees. Her arms wrapped around her legs and one hand shoved it into the uncombed mess of blonde hair now tumbling about her shoulders. "I have _work_ to do—important work—a job and… and… a _life_—"

He snorted.

"—and… exactly what was _that_ supposed to mean?"

"You might have a job, but you don't have a life," Heero replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which, by his way of thinking it, it was. Relena turned her head enough to glare at him. Before she could launch into yet another rant, he shook his head and looked her in the eye, "You're living your life for everyone else. It might be _living_, but that isn't the same thing as having a _life_. You had to give up a lot during the war and took on a lot of responsibility, but that doesn't mean you should be required to give up your own happiness."

"My work is my happiness," she replied miserably.

The look in her eyes bothered him and he didn't know why. Suddenly Heero was uncomfortable sitting there with her. He got up and took his mug of tea and went inside to make breakfast. Relena remained behind him, watching his birds in silence.

++//\\++

Trowa was busy staring at the decidedly tasteless eggs on his plate –it wasn't their fault, really, he'd left the salt and pepper on the other side of the kitchen and couldn't be moved to get them—when a newspaper was dropped on the table in front of him; he hadn't even heard Catherine come in. Trowa glanced up at his sister expecting her normal, mischievous smile and instead found a worried frown marring her face. He let his eyes fall back down to the paper and he picked it up to read the headline. "Winner Merges With More than Telecorp." He read aloud, frowning at a rather old picture of Relena and Quatre. For a long moment it didn't click and then his stomach dropped out of his body and the eggs didn't seem all that important anymore.

Catherine sat down on the seat opposite from him and leaned forward on her elbows. He felt her hand close over the one of his that was still holding the paper and her blue eyes met his over the top of the print. "You okay?" She asked faintly.

"Why wouldn't I be okay?" He asked and shrugged. It was then that he remembered his eggs and shoved up a forkful of them only to drop the entire mess back on his plate when his stomach returned and threatened to rebel. A flash of anger followed it, directed at the printed face of the girl who had been a very close and personal friend to him. How could she?

As if sensing his feelings, Catherine withdrew her hand and her expression became more worried than ever. "Didn't he visit you yesterday?" Of course she would have found out about it—most of the circus knew by now. Trowa offered her a glare and got up. He started for the door, then turned around and went back to the table, picking the newspaper up again. Trowa dropped down into the seat and unfolded the paper, dragging his eyes through the text as he searched for the meaning of this.

All the while, his sister watched him, one knuckle retreating between her lips so that she could worry on it. Catherine always did that when she was at her most upset, and by the time he had finished the article he thought that she had a right to be—but not for the reason she thought. He laughed.

"Trowa?" Catherine frowned, the knuckle popping out of her mouth.

The teen shook his head and threw the paper back on the table top. "Their fact checkers need to get their heads out of the clouds," he stated. Judging by the look on her face, his sister clearly thought him crazy. That didn't matter. "I need to make a phone call," he announced and got up, heading for the door.

"Don't you want your eggs?" Catherine called after him.

"Not hungry!"

++//\\++

Rashid sighed and gave up trying to explain, once again, that "No, Mr. Winner is not engaged to the Vice Foreign Minister. No, we would not like to consider your establishment to do the catering" or anything else along that line. By this point he wasn't sure how many such calls he'd been handed by the over-worked secretary, but he was losing count. Nor could he wake Quatre to deal with it after the state the boy had been in the night before.

This entire rumor was spiraling out of hand and quick—that, at least, Rashid was sure of. He managed to get the woman he was currently speaking with off of the phone, hardly certain of what he was saying anymore, when his phone rang again. With an aggravated sigh, the man punched the 'speak' button, ready to tell Stacy that he couldn't field any more calls for them and needed to wake Quatre when the speaker on the other end surprised him by being male.

"It isn't true is it, Rashid?"

"Master Trowa?" Rashid was more than a little surprised. It had been months since Trowa had contacted him—not since the last time he'd asked Rashid to pass on a message to Quatre and Rashid had refused. There was little surprise when his question wasn't confirmed and Rashid shook his head. "No, it isn't."

The man walked over to one of the floor length windows and looked down at the street beyond. Thankfully no one at this hotel had sold their information out to the paparazzi yet—or it didn't seem so, anyway. Regardless, Quatre's privacy wasn't going to be safe here very long and the boy _did_ need a rest. The years pressed down on Rashid's shoulders and he sighed wearily.

"Good," Trowa stated distantly. "I had to be sure."

Rashid's lips tightened. He frowned a little at the innocent window. "Trowa, I don't know what it is that you and Quatre have been playing at this past year, but I do wish you'd get over it. He could use a friend right now—if you had seen him yesterday…"

"He was here yesterday," the boy cut him off.

_"Well, that certainly explains a lot,"_ Rashid thought. Instead of saying as much, Rashid rubbed the bridge of his nose. His phone beeped to tell him that he had a call waiting and he let it. There was a lot to do, a lot to cover and contend with, and Rashid feared that Quatre wasn't in a state of mind to deal with it. "He's a strong lad," he found himself saying quietly into the phone, "But they've pushed him and pushed him… I won't see him break."

There was silence on the other end. Just when Rashid thought that the call might have been dropped, Trowa responded. "Go deal with as much as you can. I'll take care of Quatre."

++//\\++

"I called the security office when I noticed it, and got them to track down the surveillance tapes from that area. This girl is pretty smart, but we might just be able to get something." Duo was saying as they walked back to the hotel later that morning. It had been a fairly stressful morning for the both of them. Duo had gone over what he'd seen in the photographs and Wufei had to give the other boy some credit: it was feasible. If the woman _had_ used that door and no one had caught it, then no one might have thought to check any outdoor surveillance they had. Or perhaps the building next to the hotel had managed to catch something. The pessimist in him said they were barking up the wrong tree, but Duo seemed to be certain of it.

Then there was the other problem…

"Are you sure that Quatre and Relena aren't—" Wufei cut himself off as they passed a couple of people. Rather than finish his sentence, he favoured his partner with a significant look. Duo shook his head.

"Fluff-ball would have told me," he repeated for the umpteenth time, "And I don't think Rena would have kept it from me, either."

"Fluff-ball and Rena," Wufei repeated with a snort. Sometimes Maxwell was simply unbelievable.

"Yeah!" The boy grinned, then held up a hand to tick his fingers off as he recited, "Fei, Fluff-ball, Rena, Uni-banger, Butcher, Glasses, Love Potion, Sexy Zechsy, and Hee-chan."

Suddenly Wufei felt thankful to have gotten off so lightly. "Uni-banger?"

"Trowa," Duo explained. When Wufei favored him with another long look, he seemed to feel compelled to elaborate. Duo pointed to his bangs, "Because he's got that one, really dangerous bang for hair. And if you've ever seen him drunk and dancing, you'll get the second part of the pun. Now the third…" Duo made a wide gesture with his hands, laughing faintly.

"The third?"

There was a moment of blessed silence before Duo frowned. "Y'know. Fluff-ball."

Wufei didn't know, but he wasn't really sure he wanted to. This was sounding perilously close to gossip and he shook his head. In order to change the topic, he heard himself asking, "What is a 'Hee-chan.'"

"He-Man sans steroids," Duo came back shortly enough. When Wufei didn't seem to get that, either, the boy deflated and shook his head. He grumbled, "I really need to get you to watch more TV. You're missing out."

"That thing rots your brains," Wufei shrugged. He stopped to wait for the traffic light and Duo stopped with him which was a blessing—for a moment it looked as if the braided idiot was going to run out into traffic.

"'Chan'… I don't know. It's some Japanese thing. All I really know is that it makes Heero twitch."

At the mention of the Japanese boy's name, Wufei couldn't help but frown. He glanced at the boy beside him who, as always, was seemingly unaware of how serious everything going on around him really was. The light turned red, and the display on the opposite street corner switched from a hand to a man. They began to walk.

On the other side, Wufei made up his mind and caught Duo by the elbow. "Wait." They stopped together, Wufei holding his tongue until another group of pedestrians had passed, and then leaned a little closer to query, "Have you been seeing Heero?"

"Uh… define 'seeing."

Yes, he definitely did not want to know what that meant. Wufei shook his head and fought to keep from scowling up at the larger boy, "Have you spoken to him at all recently?"

"No," Duo shook his head, "No more than any of us have." When Wufei remained silent and didn't let him go, Duo frowned in turn, "He's always popping up every so often. He checks in on us… you haven't noticed?"

The Chinese boy frowned and let go of Duo's elbow. "No, I hadn't. Are you certain it isn't just you?"

"Nah," Duo shook his head, "Quatre's seen him before, if not recently, and I know I've seen him around Relena. He's hard to spot—always in the background, always half hidden from view. But he leaves clues if you know how to spot them. It's kind of like playing Where's Waldo…" Duo's face suddenly went still.

"What?" Wufei frowned. He didn't know who or what this "Waldo" character was, but considering the rest of the crap that had been spewing out of Duo's mouth he wasn't really sure he wanted to know. After a moment, Duo shook his head and shrugged easily.

"It's just a stupid kid's game. Anyway, I haven't seen him in a few months. Not since I joined up."

That fit the profile, definitely. A little chill rand down Wufei's back and he shook his head to clear it. "Come on, we need to get to the hotel." Duo nodded beside him and the two continued on their way. If Duo was a little quieter from that point on, Wufei was too lost in his own thoughts to notice it.

++//\\++

A hot shower and warm bed didn't make him feel any better himself, but they did do wonders for his body. Quatre remained nestled in the bundle of soft downy quilts and feather pillows long after sunrise. He had enough presence of mind to be somewhat baffled that Rashid hadn't been in to check on him or otherwise flip the mattress over yet, but beyond that Quatre was quite happy being a pile of brainless sludge. The cat had other ideas.

Rattrap, world-acclaimed-success at waking up over-sleeping humans, stalked into the bedroom a quarter past noon and decided that the way to approach waking up this human was in the most direct way possible. He had learned his lesson from the last bed-sheet fiasco, and this time jumped upon the bed itself and began to poke his nose into whatever holes the blanket offered. Eventually a somewhat moist, furred face found its way against sensitive human skin, and the blankets giggled. The cat wormed his way into the hole, a process that resulted in his being tucked against Quatre's bare chest, and a giggling teenage boy. Two windy arms found their way around the cat and Quatre scratched behind the animal's ears lovingly.

"I can see why Duo kept you," Quatre muttered and yawned. Rattrap sneezed and then mewled up at his temporary keeper.

After a long moment, Quatre sighed and nodded. "Okay, I'm up." He really couldn't argue with those eyes and so he wormed his way out of the blankets, made sure the cat was okay, and then stumbled his way across the room to the shower. Though he'd taken one when he'd gotten in the night before, the hot water helped him to wake up and it felt nice to be extra-clean.

When he was feeling more awake than before, the boy wrapped a towel around his waist and scrubbed another against his hair. It fluffed up like a poof ball—he could just hear Duo's sing-song voice in his head, "oh fluff-ball~!"—and he laughed at it without bothering to comb it out. Quatre ran a hand over the golden red bristles on his jaw and cheeks, and after a moment decided to leave them. The small shimmer of bristle upon his face made him almost look his age.

He gave himself a long stare in the mirror, wondering what it was that kept the people around him treating him so… so… He sighed as his vocabulary failed him. Whatever it was, Quatre wasn't entirely sure he liked it—even if he was grateful.

Maybe it was the bags under his eyes, he decided after a long while. Or the three kilos he'd dropped since Christmas. He eyed the fading scar that ran along his chest, the largest one he had which was mirrored on his back. Quatre lifted two fingers to it, tracing along the length and shivered just faintly as the cold of the bathroom finally registered. The door cracked and he startled, but it was just the cat. Chuckling faintly, Quatre looked down at the spindly figure now rubbing itself against his bare ankles and purring like a vacuum cleaner.

A creak sounded, Quatre looked up and yelped in surprise at the boy standing in the doorway. The cat gave a similar cry, but it was more for the boy that had just tripped over him. Quatre's butt landed with a dull thud on the tile and barely saved his head from cracking on the floor as well—his elbows screamed in pain. Above him Trowa's eyes widened.

"T-Trowa?"

"Sorry… I…" the other boy managed before he leaned down and offered Quatre a hand up. "You weren't answering my calls…"

After a moment's consideration, Quatre took the offered hand and let himself be helped off the ground. His free hand clutched at the towel which threatened to slip from his waist. "I was in the shower," he replied needlessly. Once on his feet, Quatre turned his back to Trowa in order to resettle the towel. When he faced him, again, he realized that Trowa had had the decency to put his own back to him. "What are you doing here?"

Trowa's back stiffened a little and the boy turned his head just enough to acknowledge Quatre. "I… spoke with Rashid. Something came up that he needed to deal with so I thought we might spend some time together in the city."

"I really need to be getting back to the office," Quatre replied with a frown. He moved around Trowa and through the open door into the master bedroom. Trowa followed.

"No, you don't," the clown argued in more stern a voice than he'd ever heard Trowa use—at least with him. "You're on vacation, remember?"

"I don't get vacations. That much is fairly obvious." Quatre jerked open the wardrobe door and began to thumb through a collection of semi-causal shirts hung there. He'd have to remember to pack for himself the next time he went anywhere, the maid that had done this had sent way too much…

Behind him, Trowa made a rather rude noise. The mattress rustled and Quatre assumed that Trowa had sat upon it. For some reason the thought of Trowa on the bed in _his_ bedroom made his cheeks heat and he was very glad that his back was to the other boy. He hated these feelings. "Is this really what you want?" Trowa asked patiently, "A life dictated by what others perceive of you? Dealing with a bunch of gossips poking their nose into every ounce of your business?"

"It doesn't matter if I want it or not," Quatre shook his head and selected a shirt. He hung it on a dresser knob and began to riffle through the pants. There was a set of faded denims _somewhere_, he was certain of it. "My father dealt with this kind of stuff all the time before he married mom. I looked it up when they started in on me last year."

"Before he married your mother?" Trowa quoted as if that were somehow significant. After he thought it over, Quatre guessed that it was.

"Yeah," he replied with a shrug. "We don't allow divorce in our culture, unless there's been a proven infidelity. So… until I'm married I'm apparently one of the most eligible bachelors in the sphere—at least, according to those magazines. They'll probably quit after I settle down but…"

"So this entitles them to leveling accusations at you and invading your privacy."

"Freedom of speech," Quatre threw a sad smile over his shoulder which quickly dissolved under the heat of Trowa's eyes. A hot wave of anger washed over him but Quatre tried not to give into it. "I don't like it any more than you do, OK? But complaining about it isn't going to solve anything! I'm not going to run away from this."

"What can you do? You can't actively deny the engagement without Relena to back you up." The bed rustled again as Trowa stood up. Quatre found a pair of suitable pants and wriggled his way into them without dropping the towel. He didn't like going commando but there was something strange about changing his clothes in front of Trowa which he couldn't quite put a finger on. When he'd carefully zipped the pants up he let the towel fall to the floor around him and reached for his shirt.

"What do you mean 'without Relena,'" Quatre asked and grabbed his shirt off the hangar. He could hear Trowa walking up behind him, "I'm sure she—"

Trowa's arm slid around his arms, pinning them to his side and pulling him back against the other boy's broad chest. Fabric clapped over his mouth and nose and he only managed a moment's struggle before the darkness claimed him.

++//\\++

"Trowa, are you sure about this?" Catherine pressed the plastic against her ear a little more firmly as her free arm wound about her waist. She sighed, looking out the trailer window at the practicing performers and busy circus life. They had another performance coming up that night—it was going to be difficult to do without one of their major stars.

"Yes, Catherine. Randy has been practicing as my backup for months. It's about time you tested him out anyway."

"How long will you be gone?" She couldn't help but ask as she sat down on at the kitchen table. This felt just like all those times before… only this time, he was actually warning her.

"I don't know. No longer than a week or two. I know what the schedule is, and I'll give you a call as soon as I can."

Catherine nodded just faintly and stared down at her hand. After a moment her eyes closed, "Alright, Trowa."

"And… I have a favour to ask." He sounded sincerely apologetic, which only sent Catherine's alarms into higher gear. Without waiting for her to ask, he continued, "There's this cat…"

++//\\++


	6. Good intentions have expiration dates

**CHAPTER SIX**  
_** Good intentions have expiration dates… **_

Heero was at his computer when she found him, staring at an email and wondering for the first time if all of this had been a Really Bad Idea. He wasn't so self-centered that he couldn't admit to having had a few of those in his time. For instance, hind-sight told him that blowing himself up had been a little melodramatic. Had it made his point? Absolutely. But as far as the course of things went, it had been among one of the higher-scale Really Bad Ideas. He was sure he knew what Relena's answer would be if he asked her for an opinion on this and so he didn't. Instead, Heero reached forward and lowered the screen of the laptop as she approached.

Though the morning had faded into afternoon, she hadn't bothered to change out of her night clothes. So far as Heero was concerned that was a good thing, because it meant that she was easing up a little. He was grateful she'd chosen to comb her hair, though.

"You said I had an e-mail from Quatre?" Relena stopped a few feet away, feet bare upon the dusty wooden floor of the dining room. The afternoon sunlight streamed in through the multitude of floor length windows that ran along three sides of the dining room, catching upon golden winks of dust floating in the air. A pair of double doors stood open at the back of the room and let in a gentle breeze from the outside. Beyond that laid a pool, perfectly clean and clear, surrounded by cracked and overgrown tile; he'd repaired the diving board as best he could, but hadn't come close to perfecting it yet.

He nodded and gestured to the bench on the other side of his table. She sat down reluctantly and leaned forward on her elbows. Heero flipped the screen of the notebook back up and quickly tabbed out of his own account. His fingers danced upon the keyboard and then he turned the computer around so that she could read what Quatre had sent.

"Relena," she mumbled as she read, "I'm sorry, but Rashid is keeping me host—"

There was a pause and then Relena's eyes rose above the monitor to meet his. "There's nothing else to this?"

He shrugged loosely, "That's all that came through. It was sent from his cell phone, though."

"How do you know—never mind, stupid question." Her eyes lowered and she moved the mouse a little. For a moment Heero considered stopping her… but no. He would only do that if she tried to send some form of email.

"Hn," he replied and settled back in his seat. "You'll be able to ask him what he meant fairly soon."

That got her attention and Relena looked up, the hand that was using her mouse stilling. Heero watched her body language closely—as mean as it was, he couldn't afford to let her get any sort of message out. She might be a "guest" here for the most part, but she was also a sort of prisoner. He ignored the awkward sense of guilt that brought with it and reminded himself that he was doing this For Her Own Good. "He and Trowa are on their way."

"They know about this?" The girl bristled as she had not since yesterday morning. Heero repressed a sigh. So they were back to this, were they? If Relena thought he didn't notice her left hand gliding stealthily along the top of the laptop keyboard she was sadly mistaken. Heero leaned forward and gently took the laptop away, closing it upon itself, and set it aside. Relena's face fell a little but she didn't fight him.

"They know _now_," he replied truthfully enough. If Quatre didn't technically know just yet, he was certainly going to know whenever he woke up. Somehow, that seemed to diffuse her temper immediately. A small smirk quirked upon her lips and he could _see_ her repress a laugh.

"You know, Mr. Yuy, if you keep telling people where we are it's going to be difficult to keep me here."

"And here I thought you wanted to go back," Heero replied automatically. Unable to help himself, he returned her smirk in kind, "Though if you're so concerned, I have some chocolate in the kitchen."

"No way! It's my turn to choose the location." Relena did laugh then, shaking her head at the pair of them. He caught a good look at her smile, wide and bright stretched across her face. Relena wasn't "gorgeous" by most people's standards, so far as Heero knew. Oh, she was pretty enough certainly, but no one would have ever mistaken her for a super model. Her face was a little too squat, nose a little too long and if her eyes were big, they might be placed just a little too far apart for "true" beauty. Yet somehow, sitting in the golden, dust-filled sunlight with a light breeze ruffling her hair and that smile stretched across pale, plump lips… she was the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen—even more beautiful than his sparrows.

Her cheeks began to colour then, and the smile wavered a little as she shifted. He'd been staring. Heero turned his head then and coughed and Relena leaned her chin forward into her clasped hands, her elbows still supporting her upon the table, "I'll stay until Trowa and Quatre get here, how is that?"

The moment shattered and Heero sighed, shaking his head. She was a stubborn one—he'd known that, of course, but she wasn't as stubborn as he was. At least that was what he kept trying to tell himself. "This isn't a negotiation."

Heero reached forward and wrapped one of his hands around the both of hers. The size difference between them was momentarily distracting; he tried not to show that. Leaning towards her, he made sure to catch her eyes as he stated, "Relax. Catch up on your sleep and have some _fun_."

"Is that an order, Mr. Yuy?" She replied, suddenly quite serious.

"Maybe it is." He smirked and stood up, sensing that it was time for a tactical retreat. Without the slightest thought, Heero left his laptop behind and headed for the doors that lead further into the hotel. Perhaps he would take advantage of that pool before he had to help Trowa figure out how to keep Quatre from squealing on them. The idea of the two blondes working together was enough to send chills down Heero's back.

From behind him, he heard Relena growl in frustration and knew that she'd found out he password locked his screensaver.

++//\\++

"Rashid. Took Quatre to the country. Be back soon. Don't worry," Catherine read aloud to the large, otherwise silent hotel room. Suite, she corrected herself, as she took in the kitchenette and multiple bedroom doors. She replaced the note scrawled in her little brother's horrible hand writing back upon the sideboard where she'd found it and then folded her arms before her chest as she surveyed the room once more. Where was this cat she was supposed to pick up, anyway?

She placed the key they'd given her in the lobby down beside the note so that she'd know where it was and set her purse next to it as well. "Here kitty, kitty, kitty…"

Calling the cat underneath her breath, Catherine found herself wandering into each of the rooms the suite had to offer. The master suite was behind the door to the right side of the room; she was appalled to find that the bedroom was large enough to fit their trailer in twice over. While the luxury was breathtaking she also couldn't help but feel it was just a little… much. What was the point of all of this? And the bed hadn't been made yet.

Catherine staved off a small touch of annoyance—but boys will be boys, she reminded herself. A sudden impulse over took her and she found herself pulling the covers from the bed and the pillows and beginning to re-straighten the sheets. It didn't take too long for someone who was a practiced hand at such things. Soon enough, the bed looked as if it belonged in a linen-store catalogue and she nodded with self satisfaction as she returned to her search.

Quatre wasn't a messy person, Catherine was happy to note. His bed aside, there wasn't a single thing out of place. His clothes seemed to be put away, bathroom cleaned, no personal paraphernalia lying about… It was almost _too_ neat. Catherine shook her head at herself and shut the door to the Master bedroom when she'd done—the cat definitely wasn't in there. "Kitty~" She sing-songed through the living room as she crossed it to the next door; that one was a shallow coat closet.

There was only one coat hung in it, a large brown trench coat far too big for the slight blond she remembered from the war. Perhaps he'd grown? Catherine closed the door after assuring herself that there was no cat there, either, and turned to the next. This was a second bedroom, smaller than the first, which sported two double beds and a private bathroom. Whoever the occupant of this room was—"Rashid," she guessed from the note—they weren't quite as neat as Quatre seemed to be. The bed closest to the door was recently used. Though there had been some attempt at setting it to rights, the end result was shoddy at best. On the other bed a suitcase was laid open, indicating that the room's occupant was more inclined to live out of his or her suitcase rather than use the drawers provided. "His," Catherine decided as she glimpsed the contents of the suitcase from the doorway.

"Kitty," she called out again, leaning into the room a little and then glancing behind her. Somehow this hadn't felt at all like snooping until she'd entered this room—but Trowa had asked her to come, and even sent her the room key! Certainly Quatre had to know that she'd be doing this.

Maybe the bathroom… The suite's second occupant had left the door to his bathroom open, as well as cracked open the closet door despite his inclination to not use the space. Catherine took a deep breath and let herself cross the threshold. When nothing happened, she let the breath out with an airy giggle at herself. The woman crossed to the bathroom without any further incident and poked her head in. She found the switch with one hand, lit the small chamber long enough to assure herself that the feline wasn't there, either, and then flicked the light off again.

Deciding to check the closet while she was at it, Catherine turned and let out a startled shriek.

The man watching her from the doorway seemed amused at that; despite that small smile stretched across his broad face, there was also subtle tension through his broad shoulders and the way in which he watched her that suggested he was in no mood to play games. Catherine felt her cheeks heat when she realized she must be standing in the middle of _his_ room. So was this Rashid?

Her watcher laid her doubts to rest then, and shifted to the side so that he was leaning against the door jamb rather than blocking the whole of it, "I didn't see a maid's cart out front and as you're not in uniform, I'll guess you're not with the hotel, Miss…?"

"Bloom," Catherine tried to shake off her apprehension and crossed the short distance between them with one hand outreached. The smile Rashid wore grew by a few degrees and clasped her hand in his, the gesture warm and firm and fleeting. "Catherine Bloom. I'm Trowa's sister."

"I see," Rashid relaxed so visibly that Catherine had to fight the urge to giggle. After releasing her hand, he brushed his fingers through his short, dark hair; there was just the faintest of silver dusting beginning at his temples, Catherine noted. It gave the man a distinguished sort of air that his manner corroborated. "I didn't realize he had one—his note said that he's taken Quatre out to the country?"

Catherine nodded and slipped back into the main room when Rashid moved out of the doorway. The remaining tension ebbed and she threw Rashid an apologetic smile, "Yeah, but I don't know much more than that. He had a courier send me the hotel key earlier today, and asked me to check in on the cat?"

Though it hadn't been phrased as a question, Catherine couldn't help but end it as one as she glanced about the living room again.

"Rattrap." Rashid replied and crossed his arms before his massive chest. The woman frowned and glanced back at him, unable to help herself as she noticed that underneath the business-casual button-down shirt he wore the line of his body suggested that his lifestyle wasn't a sedentary one. If she'd have to guess, and it seemed she would, Catherine would have marked Rashid as Quatre's bodyguard. Though what a Gundam Pilot needed with a bodyguard she didn't have the faintest clue…

"That's the cat's name," Rashid's eyes were laughing at her now and Catherine realized that she'd been staring. Refusing to blush at having been caught, Catherine just offered him a smile and something of a laugh.

"That's… fitting, I suppose, but unusual."

"It isn't Quatre's cat. He was supposed to watch him for Duo…" There was an annoyed undertone to Rashid's voice that Catherine wasn't certain how to take. Though if it had anything to do with the man's relationship to his employer it certainly wasn't any of her business! Catherine told her love for gossip to take a hike and shrugged instead.

"Like I told Trowa, I can watch him. I like animals and we have a lot of them at the circus, so it's really no bother… We just have to _find_ him."

"Easier said than done." The man shook his head and began to check under the couches in the sitting area. Catherine moved to make certain the cat hadn't managed to lodge itself behind the refrigerator or in one of the kitchenette cabinets. "I'm afraid the thing rather well hates me. I would… appreciate your help in this matter, Ms. Bloom. Ack!"

Catherine shut the door to the cabinet she'd been looking in at the man's yelp. Rashid had sat back in a crouch near the coffee table, frowning at a set of red lines on the back of his hand. "Well, I found him."

The woman crossed over to the couch quickly and sunk to her knees beside Rashid. On her hands and knees she peered into the narrow confines between the couch and floor to see two bright green eyes staring out at her. "So you did… Hm…" Catherine tossed her head to clear her bangs from her eyes and extended a hand towards the animal.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Rashid warned from behind her.

"Don't worry, I have a lot of experience with this," Catherine chuckled. Rather than trying to touch the cat she pressed her thumb to the pads of her fore and middle finger and rubbed them together. "I got Trowa to talk to me, didn't I?"

"He's your brother, isn't he?" Rashid asked. She heard the man stand and give her the full space between the couch and table.

"Well…" The woman shrugged; Rattrap was torn between watching her face and her fingers. He leaned forward a little, nose wriggling at the tips of her manicure. "That's kind of a long story. We met during the war, but he's… been very close to me since."

"I… see." There was something in the way that he said that which caused Catherine to lift her head to look at him. Rashid was standing not too far away, at the open door to Quatre's bedroom. He didn't notice her looking at him, for his attention was turned inward. The expression upon the man's face was all too familiar and Catherine had just begun to wonder if she'd misread the relationship between him and Quatre when there was a soft touch upon her hand.

She startled and the cat did too. With a wince, she returned to the task at hand and leaned down once more to see where the cat was. Rattrap mewled at her from right beneath the edge of the couch and then took one hesitant step out. Catherine scratched under his chin and picked the cat up to cradle him against her chest. The cat's soft fur brushed under her chin as the cat sought to rectify his position until she was carrying him as she would have a toddler and he was all but clutching about her neck. She laughed.

"You have a way with hell beasts, Ms. Bloom."

Catherine returned Rashid's smile warmly and shook her head. "He's just a bit scared. I would be too, with all these new people about. He doesn't have a carrier, does he?"

"No, but he seemed to do just fine in the car."

"That's okay, then." Catherine got to her feet and petted the cat's back to keep him soothed with all the movement. She glanced to Rashid as she headed for the door. "I'm with the Circus… we're out at the fairgrounds, just down I-25, uh, South, I think. If you need to pick him up… or… anything."

"This is very kind of you, Ms. Bloom," Rashid followed her towards the door, opening it for her when she got to it.

"Catherine," she corrected for him, pausing in the doorway to smile up at him.

"Catherine," he affirmed and returned her smile.

++//\\++

"There." Duo's hand appeared over his shoulder, finger pointing toward the TV monitor directly in front of him. The pair of them was currently entrenched in the Hotel's security room, the back of which was entirely covered in small screens. Each TV screen displayed a rotating bit of footage from the various cameras throughout the building—a fairly basic set up, all considered, though not at all up to either Gundam Pilot's standards. After Duo's epiphany the night before, the two had spent much of their afternoon going over the tapes from the handful of cameras positioned in roughly the spot that they were looking for. Until this moment the time had been an absolute waste—the hotel had more blind spots in it than swiss cheese had holes.

Wufei paused the track and wound it back, setting the slow motion before he pressed play. With his fingers poised over the pause button, they watched each frame blip by. This particular camera was the only one positioned anywhere near the fire exit that Duo had pointed out. It was supposed to be for the delivery area where the kitchen received its supplies and the laundry trucks came and went, however someone had knocked it aside and no one had paid attention. Wufei thought he knew who it might have been, but a dusting of the equipment had revealed no finger prints. Duo had argued that there was no way to know how long ago the camera had been turned—it now faced down the alleyway through which the delivery area was accessed, so he could be right. Either way, no one had thought to check this camera before.

"Stop it," Duo said just as he pressed the button to do so. Wufei suppressed the urge to growl at his partner and reached for his coffee. Even as he brought the cup to his lips, his mind replayed Duo's comment the day before: _"Really? Because the fact that you're frothing at the mouth over the lack of an addictive substance really hints otherwise."_ Wufei put the coffee down.

"Why am I looking at the laundry truck, Duo?" Wufei asked with what little patience he had left.

"The plates," Duo pronounced smugly and turned to lean his bum against the consol. His partner didn't need to look up to see the conceited smirk plastered on Duo's lips. Instead, Wufei focused his gaze on the fuzzy, grey-toned image the monitor had to offer and after a moment shook his head.

"I don't have my glasses with me."

"Ah," Duo's act dropped, and he turned again to lean himself over Wufei's shoulder as he took a closer look at the plates. Wufei rolled his eyes. "Well, if my eyes don't deceive me I do believe they read 'TX4AFSH'."

Wufei thought about that for a moment. "That isn't a valid plate for this colony. Or it's a vanity plate."

"And why would a delivery truck have a vanity plate?" The question was rhetorical, so Duo moved on, "The staff clearances and the checks on all deliveries that day—the laundry was picked up at six a.m. and dropped off at eight p.m. on schedule. But this truck is leaving at ten. Check the times. Our girl loaded Rena into that, I'll bet you anything on it."

"Anything?" Wufei asked even as he punched up the time data.

Beside him, Duo grinned like a lark and gave his eyebrows a suggestive waggle, "You have something in mind?"

The Chinese boy blinked and, caught entirely off guard by this, looked up before he'd checked the information. He hadn't been a Gundam Pilot for nothing, however, and recovered almost instantly. Wufei let a smirk cross his face, "If you're wrong you're never calling me 'Fei' again."

If anything, Duo's grin only got wider. "And since I'm right?"

"I'll give up coffee."

"Oh god, no!" The braided idiot's face was suddenly awash in horror, "For the love of all that's holy, man, we _need_ you caffeinated!"

"I'm not that bad," Wufei grumbled to himself and looked back down at his papers. He frowned at the time marker for the shot that Duo had picked and the corresponding one to the late-staying delivery truck. God damnit, Duo was right. He sighed. "Alright, Maxwell, you win."

"Nah-ah," Duo shook his head and took the file away. Wufei frowned and followed the papers up to where Duo was now flipping through them, seemingly for some bit of information. As he watched, the boy reached over to the consol and pressed a button to print out a screen grab of the truck. "Not Maxwell."

Wufei arched a brow and leaned back in his seats. The printer spewed forth the image after a few seconds, and Duo waved it dry before he stuck the sheet into the file with everything else that they had found to be pertinent to the case. "You made a bet with the devil and you lost buddy-boy. My condition is that you can't call me Maxwell anymore."

"And what, exactly, do you expect me to call you?"

The boy donned that same, evil little smirk that Wufei had become so used to over the past two months. By the light of the flickering monitors Duo's expression sent a chill down his spine and suddenly Wufei had an idea of what their opposition might have felt like during the war. "By my _name_."

++//\\++

His head felt like a Gundam had just done a tap dance number inside of it, complete with encore and stage rehearsal. It didn't help that the ground beneath him was shaking subtly or that the light was far too bright for his liking. His head hurt too much to think, but he did manage to groan something that he didn't remember any longer than it took to leave his mouth.

Then some minor relief came in a cool cloth against his forehead and a hand running through his hair. Quatre opened his eyes slightly, wincing away from the brilliant light behind the hand's owner. He couldn't make out more than a blur before he squeezed his eyes shut again, but that blur had managed to give off the feel of masculinity. "Go back to sleep, Quatre," a familiar, soothing voice said and the fingers danced over his cheek, "We'll be there soon."

The blond relaxed, giving only the faintest whimper for the pain of his headache and nodded. Sleep sounded like a great idea, if it meant that his head would stop hurting, and somehow he knew that he could trust this person. He tucked his head into the darkness created by his arms and let sleep claim him once again.

++//\\++

Wufei listened to the annoying jingle on the other end of the phone and considered tracking down and strangling the composer. Or, if nothing else, the person who invented ring-back tones; Wufei was convinced that that person was a sadist. Who wanted to listen to other people's crappy idea of good music, anyway? Worse yet, the pretentious idiots who tried to make "points" of their ring-backs. More and more Wufei began to believe that no one in the world knew how to communicate in an honest, straight-forward manner anymore. He missed the days on his colony, where everyone knew one another, grew up together, got married, had kids and eventually died without ever having to face the horrors of a long-distance phone bill to Earth.

Sally eventually picked up on the third repeat of "the taste of her cherry chapstick," and sing-songed an all too perky "hello" into her end of the receiver. Wufei snorted. "I swear to God, Sally, if I'm singing that tune in the shower tonight, I'll be coming for your head."

"Come now, Wufei, we all know you could do with a few girly kisses," the woman on the end chuckled.

Shaking his head, Wufei moved a little further from the door of the hotel and glared at a nearby trashcan. Why had he thrown that coffee away again? Oh yes, Maxwell—_Duo_. The thought of his partner seemed to spark something and Wufei found himself asking, "Are you aware that Duo calls you 'Butcher'?"

"Quite. He screams it loud enough every time he has to be patched up," there was a laugh and the familiar squeak of Sally's leather office chair. He imagined that she was sitting down in it now, just after her afternoon coffee break. They always met in the staff lounge at around this time, by Earth Standard; since he wasn't there, she would have just returned to her office to do paperwork. "And since when have you started calling him 'Duo'?"

"Since I lost a bet," the boy grumbled and kicked the ground. "Your guess was right. Duo has had some contact from Heero. He says not in the past two months or so, but I can't tell if he's lying or not." The space outside the hotel lobby was clear of reporters for the time being. Over thirty-six hours into the investigation and they still had yet to have a leak—that in itself was a small miracle which Wufei was not going to question. Instead, he enjoyed his moment alone while Duo wheedled the cops into getting the license plates run just a _little_ faster and tried to track down someone who knew the office number for their laundry service. Wufei had attempted to do all of this, of course, but for some reason the idiotic staff here seemed less than inclined to work with him—they all but jumped through hoops for Duo. He blamed those baby-blues.

Silence followed that statement. Just as Wufei was beginning to think he'd lost signal, Sally made a soft noise and sighed. "I'll relay the information but… Wufei, you weren't supposed to tell Duo about that."

"I didn't," Wufei couldn't help the rude noise which accompanied that statement. "His whereabouts came up in conversation. I thought Une might need the information."

"She'll be happy for it, yes. I must say, I'm surprised you didn't go to her directly." There was a shuffle of papers and then the tick-tack-tick of fingers on a keyboard. Wufei didn't think anything of it, as Sally and Une communicated more through e-mail than in person when they were at work.

"I've been here, coping with the Braided Idiot for nearly forty-eight-hours and the clock is still running. I really don't need a conversation with that harpy to top my day off."

"You could have just said that you missed me."

"I really don't think I could have," Wufei replied with a faint smirk. He turned to lean against one of the columns that held up the overhanging roof of the drop-off area and in doing so found himself face-to-face with the impassive gaze of his partner. How long had Duo been standing there?

"I see how it is!" Sally was laughing on the other end but Wufei's mirth had disappeared in one wholly awkward heartbeat.

"Sally… I'll call you back." A single click ended the call before she could protest. Wufei shoved the device into his coat pocket and waited for Duo to break the silence. It was odd, Duo without a smile stapled to his face.

"I got the address to the laundry mat," Duo said after a moment and indicated a sheaf of papers in his hand with a single, idle wave, "And the plates are a dead end, at least on this colony. I'm having them run through the three other colonies which actually match that format. If nothing comes up we'll move to the others for vanity plates."

With that, Duo moved to brush past Wufei and try and hail one of the cabs which ran omnipresent down this entire boulevard. In a seeming after thought, Duo stopped just as he was shoulder-to-shoulder with his partner and gave him a look which was chillingly serious. "I don't lie, Wufei."

The boy raised a hand and a cab stopped. Duo circled it and climbed in, leaving the near door for Wufei's benefit. With a vague sense of shame, Wufei stepped forward and joined him in the cab. They still had a job to do.

++//\\++

This place was probably condemned. Relena wrinkled her nose as she stared down another dark passage of the hotel, and tried to forget about a specific movie she'd seen years ago with her friends. There were no strange old psychic chefs or ghostly twins parading around here! The Minister promised herself that if she so much as a saw a tike she would run screaming into Heero's arms. Gundams, mobile dolls and threat of explosion she could handle, but she drew the line at homicidal ghosts.

Down the dusty hallway she went, warily eyeing the numbers still affixed to the hotel rooms. Wherever this was, it had been beautiful in its time. Now it stood a husk of its former glory like the lined and worn face of an actress past her prime. In a way, Relena couldn't help but feel a little sorry for the hotel, standing forgotten by all in a sad reminder of more decadent times. All but two, anyway. She turned the corner and came to the end of the hall where a stairway led down to the floor below. There was a window directly across from it which spanned both floors, the glass twinkling in the last rays of sunlight cast over the empty stalls and rides and booths. A thousand fairy lights of broken glass and forgotten bulbs shimmered in the ruins of the park below; the sight was breathtaking. She watched them as she trotted down the stairs and Relena had to hand it to Heero—if you _had_ to be abducted, this was the sort of place it was nice to be abducted to.

Something tugged on her shoe as she neared the bottom of the staircase. Startled, the girl pitched forward and lost her grip on the banister tumbling to the landing. Relena hissed as pain shot up through her one elbow, her hip and side. That faded quickly, however, and she twisted to push herself up when her left ankle rang out with a pain entirely different from a momentary jar; she bit back a yelp.

Looking back at it, Relena was glad to note that her foot wasn't twisted at any unnatural angle. It had landed two steps from the floor and smacked the top of her foot against the flat of the wood. Relena braced herself and tried to raise her foot. When tears sprang to her eyes and another wave of pain washed over her body, the girl stopped and waited patiently for it to fade a little. Sending up a silent prayer that it was just sprained, Relena gathered herself together and slowly eased her foot off of the step and down to the floor with her. There was more pain involved in that simple action than there rightfully should have been.

Next, she pushed herself into a sitting position and then grabbed the railing to help herself to her feet—foot, she corrected, for putting any weight at all on her injured ankle only produced more pained tears. Once she was certain of her stance, the girl took a look around the hallway and realized that she didn't really know where she was. If this _were_ a horror movie, now would be the time for the murderer or vengeful spirit to happen along and terrorize her. It wouldn't kill her of course, not yet—there hadn't been enough of a climax built up yet. Assuming that she was the main character, anyway; since she was the lone girl in a haunted mansion Relena felt that that was a fair estimate.

Her subconscious decided to poke her with the idea that Heero was either the anti-hero or the killer. Relena used that thought to try and distract herself as she hobbled the few feet to the nearest wall. Despite recent events, she really hoped that Heero was the anti-hero—mostly because she couldn't very well imagine anything more frightening than Heero angry and didn't really want that chasing her around a hotel. She'd take strange, naked corpses in bathtubs over an enraged Gundam Pilot.

Several minutes and half a hallway later, Relena had to sink down to the floor and take a breather. She'd been forced to put more weight on her ankle than she wanted to and it had left her breath shaky and hands weak. Relena pressed her back against the wall and bit her bottom lip. She stretched her left leg out in front of her and pulled the leg of her pajama bottoms up enough that she could see her ankle. It was beginning to swell, and there was a red-purple hue spreading across her skin. How attractive…

The light from outside was fading quickly as the sun set. Though the rooms that they used had running electricity, Relena wasn't certain what sort of system Heero was using. If the hotel was still on the grid then it was possible that some of the overhead lighting would still work—assuming she could find a switch—but if he was running a generator it was more likely that he'd only run electricity to specific rooms. Though she hadn't seen any of the tell-tale wires of a generator it was still possible, she thought, if you took into consideration the amount of time Heero had spent fixing up the living areas.

Just as Relena was beginning to wonder how likely it was that calling for Heero would bring him, the sound of footsteps reached her ears. They were rushed—running.

The girl sat up a little straighter as Heero rounded the corner at the end of the hall at a head-long pace. For a moment, she flashed back to her earlier thoughts of a horror movie set up and she drew away from him as he approached, slowing for the last few feet before he reached her. Heero frowned at her behavior but dropped into a crouch at her side. "What happened?"

"How did you know where I was?" She demanded, and bit back a yelp as his fingers grazed over the sore, naked flesh of her ankle. Heero retracted his hand immediately, those piercing blue eyes flying to her face. In answer he jerked his chin towards the corner; Relena turned enough to look at the far corner of the hall. At first she wasn't certain what he meant, and then she caught it: a slow, steadily blinking red light underneath a cob-webbed faux plant set on an equally dirty table.

She jumped when he touched her and found herself being scooped into his arms. Heero held her up without the slightest difficulty, cradling her to his chest as if she weighed nothing more than a feather. It wasn't the first time she'd been carried by him in the past week—that particular trip over his shoulder was still quite fresh in her mind—but it was the first time she could remember being carried so… gently.

He took her to a room she hadn't seen before. By the far more complete look of it, Relena guessed that it was one he'd spent some time cleaning up. The rugs on the floor were clean, if a little threadbare, and the furniture dusted and polished. It was also the first room she'd seen that was fully furnished—this one sported two couches, a coffee table, armchair, several filled bookshelves lining the walls and a large mahogany entertainment center with a cabinet in the middle which looked as if it should hold a TV. Heero set her gently on the couch and left the room.

Relena eyed the door he'd left through for a long moment before she shook her head in disbelief. She shifted herself a little on the couch and twisted herself to fluff the throw pillows behind her when she realized that there were none—that shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it somehow struck her as odd that Heero had forgotten a detail. If this room was any indication, the boy had obviously been trying to make the place seem as normal as a condemned hotel could be.

Heero returned more quickly than she'd have thought possible; he had an armful of medical supplies, probably more than she'd have thought necessary. Kneeling beside the couch, Heero pulled her pants leg back up and rolled the cuff up around her knee. Relena shifted awkwardly upon the cushion and then hissed as Heero touched her ankle again. He didn't so much as glance at her and she felt her cheeks heat a little. Despite the pain, she was able to realize how embarrassing it was to be so… _weak_ in front of him. "I tripped down the stairs," she finally explained.

He snorted and gave a nod. After he'd carefully explored the swelling flesh, Heero sorted through the supplies he'd brought. A short roll of bandages was quickly bound around the flesh; he secured it with a metal clasp and then brought out what looked like a piece of blue foam with Velcro attached. "What…?" She asked.

"Cold wrap." He replied as he settled her ankle into the device and strapped it about her foot and leg. It certainly lived up to its name in temperature. Despite the chill, it did ease the pain of her ankle.

"You just happened to have one around?" Heero got up and headed for a small door between two of the book cases. It proved to be a closet, from which he extracted two throw pillows. Why the boy hadn't set them out, she couldn't fathom. Instead of handing them to her, however, he put them on the other end of the couch and settled her ankle on it.

"I thought it might come in handy… and it did." The boy shrugged. They stared at one another until Relena looked away. Her gaze landed on the mahogany panels across the room.

"Is that a TV?" Her companion grunted in response. He crossed the room and slid the cabinet panels open to reveal the large screen monitor. Taking the remote off the top of the screen, he returned to the couch and handed the object to her. She accepted it graciously and smiled. "Thank you."

There was a nod in response, and Relena couldn't help but notice that Heero was looking at her ankle again. She frowned and, unsure of what to say, began to shift backward so that she could lean against the side of the couch. A hand upon her shoulder stopped her.

Relena looked up again as Heero sat down in the space between her and the end of the couch. An arm slid itself about her middle and guided her back against his chest. Pressed so closely against him, she could feel how tense he was; his nervousness mirrored her own. The thoughts that she'd been trying to repress the day before slipped back into her mind and began to suggest ulterior motives for wanting to take her away from the rest of the world. In order to ignore this, Relena lifted the remote and hit the power button. The screen flickered to life, bringing with it the raucous laughter from a Japanese game show.

After a few minutes of watching their brightly coloured insanity, Relena tipped her head back so that she could see the boy she was leaning against. "Is there anything in English?" Relena found herself whispering—she wasn't sure why. She offered him the remote like a peace offering.

His arm shifted about her, tightening in a way that was more reassuring than binding, and his eyes flickered to her face before he accepted the remote. His fingers, calloused and frayed from years of hard work, brushed against hers and Relena jerked her gaze from his. The sounds from the television began to blur together as he skimmed through the stations and Relena looked down at the arm draped so casually around her.

A sudden impulse overtook her and she laid her arm over his, her fingertips grazing the back of his knuckles. Relena settled herself against his side and tipped her head back upon his shoulder. Laughter once again filled the room as he stopped upon an old English-language sitcom—it was subtitled in Japanese but that was easy enough to ignore. Heero put the remote aside and for a long while they sat together in silence.

It was about the time that the show ended, when they had both relaxed enough to laugh faintly at some of the jokes, that Heero tipped his cheek into her hair. "I didn't mean for you to get hurt here," he whispered.

"I know," she replied and turned her head that her temple might touch his cheek.

++//\\++

The owner of the laundry mat was a pudgy, balding man in his late fifties who had something of a slavish look to his dress; he certainly wasn't the sort one would think to leave their laundry with if they wanted it back _clean_. Duo was willing to give him the benefit of doubt, however, especially after a quick tour of the facilities showed everything as sparkling clean and running with a clockwork efficiency that even Wufei would be able to appreciate. Duo tried not to bristle at the mere _thought_ of the boy currently walking alongside him.

"So I'm not quite sure we can help you boys out," the man was saying as he led them into the back area where the delivery trucks were all coming in for the night. "All our trucks were here, safe and sound when we opened up this morning."

"Do you have surveillance cameras in the yard?" Wufei asked with his usual abruptness. This time Duo didn't even try to step in between him and the citizen—maybe some human interaction would do Wufei some good. Well aware that he was behaving somewhat childishly, Duo just pressed his fists a little more firmly into the front pockets of his jacket, pulling the material tight enough to risk stretching it. He had taken a lot of things in his time, and had let all of it roll off his back like water over a pebble bed. They were just words—it didn't matter, right? Only, this time it was… different. This time, it was someone Duo cared about.

The mat's owner rubbed the back of his fleshy neck and shook his head, "Technically, yeah, but it's more for show. It doesn't do much anymore 'cept show a little red light and pretend it's taping something. It hasn't worked right in years."

So, maybe their organization wasn't _entirely_ efficient. Wufei shook his head in disbelief and Duo decided it was time to intervene. "And you're certain that no one messed with the locks?"

"Positive," the man frowned, "I check the gates myself, every morning and every night."

"Do you use a padlock or is it electronic?" Duo countered. He could see the gates on the other side of the yard, just around one of the delivery trucks. As he watched, the last truck came in for the night and the gate began to slide shut.

"Electronic," the man snorted in disbelief, "Ain't no one in the sphere that trusts a padlock anymore."

"Do you mind if I take a look at it?" Duo asked. He got a shrug in response, which he read as permission and began to pick his way across the yard, dodging various employees who seemed to know better than to stop and gawk at the Preventers in their midst. Over the din of the workplace, Duo could just barely hear Wufei continue to grill their host about his security measures and anything "odd" which might have come up in the past few days. At this point, however, Duo was beginning to consider that the truck they'd seen might have somehow been a fake, despite the logo splashed onto its side. It wouldn't be hard to mimic, he decided after a moment of deliberation, just time-consuming and costly.

The real question was whether or not Heero would go to such lengths.

Duo thought that he might, but it would be worth it to check the lock anyway. He found the consol for the lock easily enough—it was right in the open on the inside of the yard, built into the large column which supported the gates. With expert ease, Duo flipped the panel open and gave the screen a quick tap with his index finger to wake it and the machine beeped angrily at him. He glanced at the number pad beside the screen and, after performing a quick evaluation of the device, punched in the proper access code.

In less than a minute he had gained entry not only to the gates but to any information the system had to offer; it really was too easy. Models like this always kept records of their usage—it was a failsafe measure to alert anyone that they had been tampered with. The problem was that most of the people who owned systems like this never even realized that they came with that function, much less had any idea how to properly utilize the information.

Just to drive his point home, he pressed the button that would re-open the gates.

"Now, how in the world did you do that, young'n?" The laundry owner asked as he and Wufei joined Duo at the control panel. Duo turned around, resisting the urge to glance at his partner as he did. Though he told himself that he didn't need Wufei's approval, there was still a large part of him that hoped to once again see a glimmer of respect in the man's eyes. Or perhaps that was just his pride wanting to make Wufei eat crow.

"The keypad," he replied, and winced a second later when he realized just how smug that sounded. "They wear out, you see, especially models that have the painted numbers. You're much better off with a blank-key model or a pure touch screen, rather than the integrated system like this. Any thief fresh to the game could break in to this place just by glancing at the keys."

The man looked so shell-shocked that Duo actually felt a little sorry for him. Duo did glance at Wufei then, but only to get the man's attention. Once he was certain that he had it, he turned back to the control screen and pointed at the display, "The gate was reopened from the inside at twenty-ten, locked, and then reopened from the outside at twenty-three-oh-five, and locked it again behind them. Someone took one of your trucks, sir."

"Which means that we need to search each and every one, as well as have access to your security feeds," Wufei added without a pause. Duo stole another glance at him, just enough to ascertain that Wufei still looked uncomfortable with something. If he knew the other boy as well as he thought he did, it was likely that he couldn't adjust to the idea that Duo was right.

The owner of the laundry mat shook his head in disbelief. After a moment he seemed to realize that that could have been taken as refusal and he nodded his head, one pudgy hand rubbing its way through his sparse hair. "Of course, of course… is there any way you could look it over tonight? I still… there's business to do in the morning."

"Sure," Duo nodded before Wufei could find any reason to object, "But you must understand that if we find anything—"

"Of course," the man nodded. He glanced at his staring workers and then looked back at the gate to stare at it. Duo knew that the man was still shocked at the idea that his safe little world wasn't quite as safe as he'd thought it was—even if he hadn't had anything of his stolen, the invasion of one's security was still a hard thing to adjust to. Duo could appreciate that.

He reached out and took his partner's elbow, turning them both away and dropped the appendage when Wufei seemed inclined to follow. "Let's get the officers," he said, "We're going to need help on this."

++//\\++

_**++//A/N: And so concludes our little "the story so far" flash back. Chapter seven will be posted shortly! //++ **_


	7. Something Witty This way Comes

**CHAPTER SEVEN**  
_** Something Witty This way Comes … **_

The next time that he woke, it was to the sound of the world shattering. As he was fairly certain that he hadn't gone to sleep in a demolition zone, Quatre felt he should be concerned about this. The problem with that, of course, was the inherent difficulty in caring about anything when one's head felt as if a mallet had been taken to it. Repeatedly.

There was only one time when Quatre had felt worse than he did at that particular moment. Much to his horror, upon opening his eyes he discovered that sharing the room with him was a rather vocal blond woman brandishing a stick-like weapon.

He yelled, flailed backward and fell out of the bed that he hadn't even realized he'd been lying in.

Relena stopped screaming at the door and hobbled around the end of the bed. "Quatre?" she asked.

At the same time, the door stated (and managed to sound very much like Heero in doing so): "Relena, you shouldn't be walking on your ankle."

"Get. Out." Relena fumed and the door promptly shut itself. Still lying on the floor, Quatre was beginning to sense that he was missing something quite important.

As well as his pants.

"Relena," he asked as he stared at the naked, hairy legs protruding out of his boxers and wrapping over the mattress edge, "What's going on?"

"We've been kidnapped," she huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. The weapon she was wielding whizzed past his face as she did and he winced away.

"That doesn't make any sense," the boy complained and began to lever himself off the floor, "And why are you carrying a curtain wand?"

The woman snorted rudely and sank onto the end of the bed. She lifted an ice-pack-clad foot and deposited it upon the mattress. The curtain wand remained clutched in her hand but it waggled far too suspiciously for Quatre's liking. "Nothing about this situation makes sense, I promise you. And I'm protecting us."

"With a curtain wand."

"Yes." After a nod, Relena's eyes darted over his mostly unclothed body and she frowned. "I think there's another robe in the bathroom, if you want it. I don't know what those two are thinking."

With another look down at himself, Quatre had to agree that clothing would be a good option. He turned to look in the direction that Relena's curtain wand pointed, making certain to keep well clear of its reach, and eyed with suspicion what he suspected to be the bathroom door. Based upon the look of the door itself he wasn't at all sure about how sanitary it was in there. Quatre took two steps towards the door and wobbled.

He stopped with a frown, shook his head, and tried again. Though his mind reasoned that walking a straight line between the bed and the bathroom shouldn't be all that difficult, he was having a hard time getting his feet to agree.

As he finally reached the end of his epic trek, Quatre came to jolting stop. "We've been kidnapped!"

Behind him, he heard Relena sigh.

++//\\++

A rap at her office door and Lady Une looked up from the headache inducing forms spilled across her desk. She rubbed slow circles against her temple with her left hand as she stretched her back out. Her right hand she flapped at the blonde in the doorway.

"If you're still getting headaches, you may need to check your prescription," Sally noted, closing the door behind her when she moved into the cramped office.

"There's nothing wrong with my eyes, Sally," Une replied and leaned back into the lavish leather desk chair. After three months torture at the hands of the "regulation" office furniture they'd all had to deal with—cheap, mass produced stuff that was responsible for more than a few back aches and sore rear-ends—Une had finally broken down, pulled rank, and wheeled in something comfortable she'd bought with her own wallet. Afterward she'd been unable to object when the regulation chairs were slowly replaced by more individual ones. So long as they were kept to actual office chairs, and not the recliner one joker had tried to pass by security, Une didn't object.

(Unfortunately this policy meant that the entire office was then subjected to Maxwell's idea of "proper" seating arrangements. Une didn't know where Duo had managed to find a hot-pink, zebra-striped leather desk chair, much less one with white fuzzy trimming, but it made the third floor office a much brighter place.)

"Which is why you need glasses," Sally observed.

Une picked up the top most form from her desk and held it aloft for Sally's inspection. After glancing it over, Sally gave a low whistle as she sunk into the chair placed on the opposite side of Une's desk. "Is that Arabic?" she asked with a frown. "Who here fills out forms in Arabic?"

"No one," Une replied and replaced the form with a sigh. "If it _were_ Arabic there wouldn't be an issue. That's meant to be English."

"Ooooookay," Sally's eyebrows rose sharply into her hairline. Sitting forward a little, the woman rested her elbow on the desk and put her chin in one hand. "Whose is that? That's terrible!"

"Maxwell's," Une shrugged. She paused and then added, "I'm surprised you couldn't tell. Who else would use an entire rainbow of ink?"

Sally laughed a little at that. "True, you have me there."

"Actually," Une shook her head and sat up straight again. Unable to stop herself, she smiled as she picked out the various pages in Maxwell's last stack of paperwork and spread them out across her desk in order. "I thought it was odd. Usually Duo just uses the colours in sequential order, but there didn't seem to be a pattern to these. At least, not at first."

Une sat back and waited as Sally leaned forward to get a good look at what was before her. It only took a moment for Sally to catch the pattern in the papers spread before her and the woman's lips twitched upward. "Is that a…" Sally's voice trailed off as she began to laugh.

"A Leo in a ballet tutu? Why, yes, I do believe it is." As Sally calmed down, Une crossed her arms over her chest and smiled to herself. "If only he put half this amount of effort into getting along with Wufei."

"I think the problem is that he does," Sally twittered faintly. She scrubbed the dampness from one eye with her hand and gave a great, amused sigh. "Speaking of, Wufei called me this afternoon. He said that Duo hasn't heard from Heero either."

"And you don't think that's true," Une realized.

The blonde's lips pursed and she shook her head slightly. "I don't think he knows Duo well enough to tell."

"Duo Maxwell. Runs and hides but never tells a lie," Une paraphrased slowly. To her growing sense of dread, Sally's blue eyes stared solemnly back at her from across the desk.

"Duo lies all the time," the medic smiled sadly, "He just doesn't see it."

++//\\++

There was something about this case which was eating at him. Wufei growled lightly at himself as he watched the forensics team scrambling about the three trucks that they'd narrowed their search down to. Only three hours remained before the business would reopen; two before they had to announce Relena's disappearance to the world.

Despite the lack of time on their part, his brain didn't seem to want to supply him with the proper solution. Or even, he thought with annoyance, even clue him into what it was that was off. He felt as if he were missing something which was staring him in the face and mocking him—much like Duo was inclined to do on a daily basis, these days.

"Here," said the Devil himself, as he handed Wufei a steaming cup of coffee. Wufei gathered the will to give a nod of thanks as he took the cup by its cardboard protector. "I just can't believe he didn't have surveillance cameras. That's fucking basic."

Wufei lifted a brow at the sudden tone which Maxwell (Duo, his conscience reminded him) was using. The bags under Duo's eyes said it all and Wufei couldn't help but frown deeper into his first draft of scalding hot ambrosia. His nose scrunched and his brows furrowed; Duo had brought him hazelnut. The feeling of eyes on him made him look up and he caught Duo shifting his attention rather rapidly back to the forensics team.

"They're going to put this all over the news," Duo complained after the silence between them had time to settle. He brought the neglected cup in his own hand up to his lips but didn't drink from it. After a moment he brought it back down again and leaned back against the side of the building.

"With any luck it will only escalate the liaison rumor," Wufei shrugged. "We're rather lucky it stumbled up when it did."

"Lucky?" Duo snorted. "No such thing."

"Well, if you don't believe that it was luck," Wufei replied evenly, "Then exactly why would it have…"

They turned to look at one another at precisely the same time that the one of the forensics crew shouted something at them. Rather than speak of their mutual revelation, Wufei stood up and headed over to see what evidence, if any, science had rewarded them. Behind him, Duo pulled out a phone.

++//\\++

"What are you doing here, old man?" Rashid asked himself for the millionth time since he'd climbed into the Mercedes an hour before. The traffic had been terrible but he'd ridden through it accompanied by a steaming pile of guilt. Which was utterly ridiculous, he continued to tell himself, as he hadn't done anything to be ashamed of.

"_You haven't done anything to be ashamed of, _yet_,"_ his guilt informed him. He tried to ignore it, which only prompted it to add: "_But you want to."_

Seemingly encouraged by his silence, Rashid's guilt went a little further, "_and who wouldn't? She was a sweet little thing, after all."_

Silence.

"_Good personality, well spoken…"_

Rashid nodded a little.

"_Hot little body_."

He frowned.

"_And when she bent down like that, those tiny little shorts over her round, well-formed_—"

"Will you just shut up?" Rashid snapped at the non-corporeal guilt.

The child standing nearby with a blue balloon and stuffed carnival toy began to cry. Its mother shushed it and sent Rashid scathing looks. The man ducked his head a little and hurried away into the crowd milling around the exit of the big top.

Just about to give into the nagging sense of guilt, turn around and get back into his car, Rashid felt his pocket buzz. The phone's tone was impossible to hear over the crowd; Rashid fished it out and pressed the 'call' button to his ear. "Hello?"

"Hey, pally," Duo's voice grated over the static and popping that most cell's got this far out of a city—especially on colonial calls. Rashid thought the boy sounded tired, not something he was accustomed to hearing from Duo, but unable to place it said nothing. "I couldn't get a hold of Quatre, figured he was in some sort of meeting."

"No," Rashid shook his head and stepped to the side as some of the jugglers stepped past him, milling about the crowd. He glanced them over, but none of them sported the red hair he was looking for, "Trowa took him out on a camping trip. They should be back in about a week… it was the only way to keep him on his vacation."

"Huh." Static crackled on the phone for a moment. Then, he followed it up with another question, "Hey… you might know something about this. You guys hear these rumors flying around about Fluff-ball and Rena?"

"No, they're not true," Rashid sighed.

"Duh," the voice on the other end snickered, "I know that. What I want to know is where they came from."

Rashid stopped in his search for a moment, watching a gigantic snake man hand out balloons to children. Duo knew that? Though he felt as if there was some sort of meaning to that statement, he let it ride and replied as best he could, "Where the rumors came from?"

"Yeah. Like, is there any hint at what meeting or whatever started them?"

"No," Rashid shook his head. Lifting one hand to his beard he stroked it as he thought, "Now that you mention it, I haven't heard anything about where this pseudo-information is coming from. Usually rumors like this are started for political reasons: either as something about yourself to distract the public from what is really going on, or else as an attack by one of your enemies."

"But why would an enemy of Quatre's start a rumor about him getting married? Or Relena's, for that matter?"

Rashid took a moment to ponder that over as he wormed his way through the crowd to a place on the sidelines. He couldn't watch for the red-head as well, there, but it would keep him from being in the way of traffic flow. Once he was settled, he shook his head, "I'm sorry, but I can't think of any reason. I know it certainly didn't come from our camp, and Relena's PR certainly would have informed us if they were 'leaking' any rumors."

"Alright so, just so that I have this straight," Duo replied after a long moment, "No one would gain anything by putting the spotlight on those two, and Quatre wasn't using it as a cover?"

"Is there anything that Quatre would use it as a cover for?" Rashid asked with some amusement. The silence which greeted him on the other end of the phone didn't help his mood at all.

"Thanks for the help, Rashid," Duo said in typical cheery fashion after a minute. It seemed to be the end of the call, but then Duo added, "Oh! How's Rattrap?"

"He's definitely your cat," Rashid frowned. "Duo, what—"

It was then that he saw her, radiant in her sequin-covered uniform and standing in the light of the big-top entrance. Catherine turned, as if she felt his gaze upon her. Their eyes met and she smiled, one delicate hand lifting in greeting.

"I've gotta go; sorry, Rashid!" Duo interjected in a rush and the line went dead. Rashid didn't mind.

++//\\++

"So let me see if I have this straight," Quatre said as he stared at the steaming cup of tea he'd been supplied as soon as Relena had allowed their two kidnappers back into the room. He wasn't entirely certain he could trust it, though Relena seemed to be drinking hers with no reservation. The facts were slowly beginning to slip into his still drug-addled mind, and he was still not sure he believed that this was reality—certainly someone was playing some sort of cruel trick. "You've kidnapped Relena and myself, because…"

Quatre stopped for a moment to glance up at the circus performer currently leaning against one of the cracked and weathered bedroom walls, "We work too hard?"

"You work _constantly_," Heero emphasized from the doorway. Though he'd been allowed back into the room, he seemed to be stopped short by the glare (and curtain wand) that Relena was still holding in his direction. "For everyone else. It's counter productive if you burn yourself out. Time away was the logical solution."

"And you never heard of picking up the phone?" Relena snapped, throwing her arms wide. The curtain wand slapped against the wood paneling behind her and Quatre winced. "You could have voiced your concern like a normal person!"

After a moment, the girl added: "For once."

"Would you have listened?" Trowa—not Heero, Quatre was shocked to note—asked in reply. That seemed to give Relena pause, but only for long enough to allow her attention to shift.

"Don't even get me started on you," Relena hissed, brandishing her impromptu weapon, "I trusted you!"

"And you didn't trust me?" Heero interjected. Though his voice held no inflection at all, Quatre could feel the emotion radiating off of him like a tidal wave. It was always like this with Heero, he remembered; anger, hurt… so much hurt. Both blonds' lips tightened for different, yet similar, reasons.

"Why should I?" Relena hobbled a step away from him, "You're never around. You never call, never write. Now this? You need to make up your mind on where you want to be with me."

Heero stood up, turned and left the room as quietly as he'd come.

"Quatre—" Trowa began after a moment. His attention called back to his own problem, Quatre's eyes lifted momentarily to the boy he'd been avoiding for over a year. The words came easy and even to his lips, though they were the hardest things he'd ever said.

"Get out."

They stared at one another a long moment and then Trowa, too, left. Alone once again with Relena, Quatre set his mug down on the bedside table.

Much more steady on his feet than he'd been an hour before, Quatre cautiously crossed the room to where Relena stood. He eyed the curtain wand cautiously, but extended a hand to gently touch her shoulder. "Rena?"

The girl sniffed loudly.

He pressed a little more firmly against her shoulder to turn her. Relena needed no more encouragement—she turned to him and wrapped her arms about him, burying her face into his shoulder. The curtain wand hit the floor with a dull 'thud' and neither of them cared. Quatre squeezed his arms about her in return, cheek pressed into her hair, and felt a sudden surge of pride for the girl in his arms course through his heart. He'd expected her to be crying, yet she wasn't.

"Sometimes," Relena whispered faintly, "Sometimes I wish those horrible rumors were true."

"I wish they could be, Rena," he replied in kind. She nodded, understanding completely. Another muffled sniffle and then they let one another go.

Relena managed to favour him with a smile that was only half-forced. "Well. How rusty are your skills as a tactician?"

++//\\++

"D. C. M. Forever and always," Duo read out of the inside of the white-gold wedding band he was twisting about in his hand. He lifted a brow at that and frowned. "It doesn't seem like much, Fei. Some lady lost her band in a dry cleaning."

"Not lady, man," Wufei replied as he tossed his empty coffee cup at the garbage can. "And not just any man. You don't recognize the initials?"

Duo rolled his eyes, "Wufei, there have got to be a hundred people with the initials D.C.M. out there!"

"True. But that ring is solid gold, and I've seen the inscription before." He stopped on the street corner and punched the button to cross the street. During the morning rush hour it would take a few minutes for the light to turn, and he glanced at Duo who was still fiddling with the ring.

The boy smirked, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "You've seen a wedding ring before? Up close? Wufei, I'm shocked."

Rolling his eyes, Wufei gave the faintest of snorts. "I'm more familiar with them than _you'd_ know. That's Dorothy's husband's ring."

From the corner of his eye, Wufei noted the shock on Duo's face, which melted almost as soon as it'd come. He barked out a laugh, jilted by his lack of sleep, and shook his head. "Well, well, well… I didn't know she'd gotten married."

"They invited most of the Preventers. It was before you signed on—she was one of the leading backers to the organization, after all," Wufei shrugged. "His last name is Marciel. Duke."

"Makes sense," Duo replied faintly and nodded. The signal turned and they began across the street together. "So it's no coincidence that Dorothy's husband's wedding band ended up in one of the laundry trucks we were investigating. Or maybe it is? Has she had business in the colony…?"

Wufei shook his head, "Don't know, but we're going to find out. I'll check her itinerary once we get back to the hotel. What did Qu—Fluff-ball say?"

The burst of startledlaughter next to him actually surprised a smile out of him. Rather than let Duo see it, Wufei turned his face to the side and pretended to be watching the crowd across the street from them. The laughter subsided slowly and Wufei looked back in time to see Duo swipe a tear from his eye. "I don't think we should use their names too readily in public," he explained.

Duo nodded, the smile still stretched upon his taunt and tired features, "Yeah, I can agree to that. Still, I never thought I'd hear you…" The boy shook his head, then, and seemed to forget whatever he'd been about to say. "I couldn't get hold of him, but I got Lurch instead."

"Lurch?"

"Big, tall, and bearded."

"Ah," Wufei nodded in recognition.

"Anyway. He said that Uni-banger took Fluff-ball out for a camping trip," Duo hummed thoughtfully. The expression on his face was easy enough to read, even if Wufei hadn't known the two in question.

"Any idea where they really are?" Wufei asked as they approached the entrance to their motel. He made no comment as Duo moved to open the door for him, and then followed him inside.

"Not a clue. Lurch did say that the rumors weren't started by their department, though, or Relena's." Duo fell back into step beside him. As usual, the motel staff made no move to stop them or attempt any sort of communication at all—they didn't do that when Wufei was around, though he'd seen Duo speaking with some of the bellhops when he thought Wufei wasn't looking. Not for the first time, he wondered if perhaps Duo did have a point about his communication skills… but what did it matter?

"But the rumors didn't come from any known source," Wufei concluded.

Duo nodded, "And rumors, especially fortuitous ones, usually have a starting point."

Wufei extracted their keycard from his jacket pocket and swiped it against the entrance panel to their room. The lock clicked and he flipped the light switch on as he passed into the quiet chamber. That feeling of 'something missing' was beginning to press on his nerves. He divested himself of his jacket, throwing it carelessly over his bed, and ignored the 'tsk'ing sound that Duo made behind him. The door shut as he sat down in one of the armchairs with his laptop.

"Get some rest," Wufei told his partner as he booted up the computer, "I'll check this out and wake you when we have some answers."

Despite the order, Duo stood in the entrance to their little room for a long time, watching him. Wufei pretended not to notice and eventually Duo went into the bathroom and closed the door behind himself. A moment later the shower began to run.

++//\\++

Trowa followed the sound of tapping. It wasn't hard to do in so quiet a place, and he soon found Heero seated at a counter in the massive industrial kitchen with his laptop and a mug of tea. The Japanese boy seemed to be oblivious to the world, but Trowa knew better. As he headed into the steel and tile space, he picked an apple from a fruit bowl stationed near the door. A knife appeared in his other hand just as quickly, taken from the slip in his sleeve, and he began to peel it as he walked.

"You didn't believe she'd take it so seriously?" It wasn't a question, though he phrased it as one. Waiting to see Heero's reaction, Trowa stopped a few feet away and leaned one hip against a large, empty sink. Heero grunted in response and his fingers continued their tap dance across the keys.

That was the response he'd assumed he'd get, and Trowa merely nodded. He pretended to watch his apple as he curled the skin off of it; the bright red ribbon grew longer by the second and twisted upon itself as it dangled. "I did warn you that this might backfire."

"Yet you brought him here," Heero pointed out with an accusatory glare. The taller boy shrugged; though he felt badly for having hurt Quatre, and it seemed that he had, he still wasn't certain that he had not done the right thing. Yes, the boy was here against his will… but the memory of that irrational laughter, the deep sadness in Quatre's eyes…

"I didn't say we were making a mistake," Trowa corrected, "Only that they are not too happy for it."

"We should try harder," Heero agreed and his eyes returned to his work. Trowa nodded and lifted the ribbon of apple skin to his mouth.

'_Try harder_,' he thought, '_or try doing what they say. Relena, at least, has told you what she wants._'

++//\\++

He was lying on his side and his back was cold, but his chest was warm. Warmer, at any rate; it was all relative to the storm howling death about their ears, and he snuggled closer to the source of that fading heat. Why anyone had thought to put weather systems on the colonies was beyond him. The colonies? Was that where he was?

Duo forced his eyes open; the scene about him was blurred by snow one moment and then cleared in the next. The storm had stopped, but the freeze remained, and he stared into a pair of filmed, clouded and very familiar eyes. Jerking upright out of the snow, Duo stared at the body of the boy next to him.

Reaching forward with shaking hands, Duo poked the boy's shoulder first, swallowing at how stiff the blue-tinted skin was. With both hands he grabbed him, shaking him, but he knew what he looked at—he knew it as surely as he knew the air he breathed.

"It isn't fair," Duo breathed into the night air and scrambled to his feet. As he stumbled backward his foot landed in something… soft. He was walking on a carpet of children.

The snow became fog and the corpses began to move. The boy he'd been laying with lifted to his own feet, dead wide eyes staring at his former companion. "It's all _your_ fault, you know," Solo twittered in demonic laughter, "All of it. See how many orphans you've made?"

Duo shook his head, but it was useless to argue. After all these years, he knew the arguments wouldn't work. "Leave me alone," he begged instead, and lifted his arms to shield himself from the bodies of the children rising from their communal grave. Their hands tugged at his clothes, his braid, his arms. They pulled and climbed and forced him down. "You're one of us," the children giggled, "One of us, one of us!"

"LEAVE ME ALONE!"

One balled fist surged towards Solo's shocked, rotting face. This time it connected.

Duo's eyes opened to reality. He stared up into the darkness of the hotel room at the shadow which loomed over his bed and for one horrific moment, he understood that death had finally come for its due. Then Wufei, without letting go of the fist he'd caught, shifted to the side and snapped on the light at the bedside table. He cast a significant look at his partner, the meaning of which Duo missed entirely, and let Duo's fist go.

Dropping back down into his mattress, Duo stared at the ceiling as he the adrenaline rushed from his veins. Bit by bit he became more aware of the sweat sticking his beater and bangs to his skin, to the infernal hum and cough of the motel air conditioner. Wufei had turned it up again—it was freezing.

"I told you not to have that burrito," Wufei finally said from the other bed. A grin stretched itself across Duo's lips and he laughed.

++//\\++

**++//A/N: So sorry for how long it's taken to update this fic! I started work on this chapter eons ago, but with a lack of a beta and some IRL problems that cropped up it kind of fell onto the back burner. I'm happy to announce that I've found a wonderful, GODDESS of a Beta, my dear Loki, who has greatly helped to improve this work thus far. Chapter eight is nearly complete, and I'm going to try and get you at least three more within the span of my summer break. Also, for any fic writers out there who might be interested in a summer GW Ficathon or gift exchange, go to this LJ community: .com/gundam_wing/ I have a post up there now taking ideas, suggestions, and gathering interest. Within the next week we should know what we're doing, if anything. 3**

**Thanks to everyone who has enjoyed this fic thus far, and I'll see you in a few days,**

**Rae.**


	8. Killing With Kindness

**CHAPTER EIGHT**  
** Killing With Kindness… **

Quatre carried Relena piggy-back down the stairs only after besting her at a game of chess. She wasn't happy about it, but had to admit that it was better than attempting to limp her way down them—and it would quicken her chance of recovery. Taking the spill in the first place hadn't been good for her health or dignity, and now it was hindering any chance of escape that they might have otherwise had.

Though she trusted that Quatre could plan something around her injury, she couldn't help but feel as if she were coming up lacking when she'd already been handicapped. It was like being the three-legged mutt in a pack of trained Dobermans.

Well aware that she was feeling sorry for herself, Relena tightened her arms about Quatre's shoulders after she pointed out the door to the kitchens. He nodded and headed across the empty, mostly dark dining room, pushing the double doors open with one foot when he reached the other side. The brightness of the kitchen was almost a shock, as the site of their two captors wasn't. Both former pilots looked up as the conjoined pair entered, but neither blond paid them any attention.

"Hmm…" Quatre hummed to himself, eyeing the several large refrigerators placed around the room. "Which one has food in it?"

Relena wasn't sure herself, and after a moment, Heero seemed to realize that he was being addressed. "The one closest to you," he answered. "I was going to start dinner in a moment…"

"That's alright," Quatre rebuffed with a cheerful smile and carried Relena towards the refrigerator, "We know our way around a kitchen. Right, Rena?"

"Right," She nodded and plastered a smile across her face. It wouldn't fool Quatre, she knew, but she didn't think the other two were quite as good at reading people as he was. Heero definitely wasn't.

Quatre sat her down on one of the counters, and Relena momentarily considered hopping down to help him with gathering the supplies. The look he spared her stole all thought of that, but the smile upon his face never wavered. She gave the briefest of nods and settled herself a little further back on the counter. As much as she hated to, she had to give Heero some credit—every surface in the kitchen shined like a mirror.

Her fellow politician turned to open the gargantuan refrigerator door and survey its contents. He gave a low whistle at the foodstuffs packed within and Relena had to join him in the sentiment. "There's fresh seafood in the other half," Heero informed them from across the room.

"How do you feel about spaghetti, Rena?" Quatre said instead.

"I'd love some," She answered with a grin. There was a grunt from the other side of the room and then the tap-tap-tapping of Heero's keyboard began again. Relena thought that there was an excessive amount of force being used now, but she knew that she was also looking for it. Rather than turn her head to see him, she kept her eyes focused on the ground meat Quatre was pulling from the refrigerator. Suddenly curious, she had to ask, "When did you learn to cook?"

"Ah," Quatre put the meat aside and then began to rummage through the cabinets for the other ingredients. There seemed to be an entire supermarket shoved into the kitchen—a byproduct of Heero's over ambitious efficiency, no doubt, and he soon stumbled upon a variety of noodles. "I'm not that good, I'll warn you. I only know how to make a few things. Duo taught me, last time he stayed with me."

"Duo cooks?" Unable to contain her surprise at this, Relena instead decided to make herself useful. She looked up to where the pans and some utensils were hanging above them. If she remembered correctly, the last time she'd seen Pagan cook ground meat it had been in one of the flat ones. She hummed to herself and selected a pan, carefully lifting it from its hanger, setting it on the stove next to her. When Quatre turned from the cabinet with his prize, he nodded at the pan and her question both.

"Yes, actually; he's really good, too. I wanted him to stay on as my chef," Quatre laughed. "He wouldn't hear of it though. Settled down with the Preventers soon after."

"I remember him mentioning something about that," Relena chuckled, "Though if memory serves, he said you were trying to tie him down like a little house wife."

"He would," her fellow blonde laughed and lit the burner with a flick of a knob. He poured a little water into her selected pan and put the meat in with it. "That should take a little while to brown right."

"I'll have to invite him to the house next time he has a vacation," Relena chuckled. "This I've got to see for myself."

"Tell him that he'll drown you in cookies," Quatre warned and returned to the cabinets for tomato sauce and spices, "I gained four kilos before he left, I swear it."

"Liar," Relena twittered as she crossed her legs. Her ankle was beginning to throb from being left 'down' so long, and she had to hoist it up a little higher. With a sigh the woman leaned back on her hands a bit. The water around their meat was beginning to sizzle, and Relena detached a spatula from the rack above her head in order to flip it over.

"I think I remember his recipe for the sauce," Quatre mused, half to himself, as he scoured the refrigerator for produce. He came up with some mushrooms and a clove of garlic, then a bell pepper. The boy paused, humming at the refrigerator. After a moment he pulled out something green loosely cone-shaped. "Peppers?"

Relena shrugged, "I wouldn't know anything about it. I'm not too fond of anything spicy, though."

Nodding, Quatre put the peppers back and shut the door. They continued to talk as he chopped the vegetables and mixed everything together, along with several spices that Relena couldn't identify, into a sauce pan. Across the room the tapping never ceased, and Relena could see Trowa carefully slicing up an apple with a pocket knife, eating it one slice at a time. She ignored this as Quatre did also, and soon enough they had a nice dinner going on the stove beside her.

"You know," Relena said suddenly in a quiet aside to their conversation, "This is the first time I've really cooked like this." With a frown, she added mentally: _and the first time, in a long time, that I've been able to sit about talking about… nothing_.

Quatre looked up from taste-testing the sauce. He was too good a politician to let his poker face slide now, but the look in his eyes said it all—he knew her thoughts, and he agreed with them. Relena bit her lip and refused to look at the silent guards behind her.

++//\\++

Duo frowned over the itinerary of one Duke Malcom Marciel. It wasn't the most imposing name on the planet, but he supposed that not all "royalty" took the storybook ideals to heart. He wondered if that had lost the guy any face amongst his peers. "Ok, so… neither he nor his wife have, officially at least, been here. Ever, so far as we can tell."

"Mm." Wufei nodded. "The ring was found under the driver's seat. I'm surprised that none of the workers found it, but it certainly would have turned up in a thorough cleaning of the vehicle."

"Which we probably stopped by getting there before they shut up shop," Duo observed with a shrug. Though it didn't matter in the long run of things, he didn't want to think too badly of the owner of the laundry mat. The man had been really helpful and hadn't even required them to get warrants for anything, which saved them both a ton of paperwork. Anyone that saved Duo time at his desk was someone to be thought highly of. "But I get what you're saying."

His partner offered little more than a snort to that observation. By turning his head slightly to the left, Duo was able to get a clear view of Wufei standing beside him. The slightly shorter boy had his eyes riveted to the flight board of the shuttle station, eagerly awaiting the boarding signal for their flight. Duo didn't think he could blame him—he wanted to be as far away from this colony as he could.

Rubbing one palm against a tired, gritty eye, Duo heaved a sign and tipped his head back against the wall behind him. "Were you ever able to get through to her secretary?"

"I have the arrangements taken care of," Wufei told him in a tone which clearly added "for the millionth time," to the sentence. Silence drifted between them, only the relatively subtle noise of the early morning crowd around them to break it. He'd successfully tuned that out by this point and hoped that Wufei would bother to say something rather than just walk off when their flight showed up; Duo shut his eyes.

"I don't like this," Wufei cut in, much to Duo's surprise, a moment later.

Popping one eye open, Duo cast it down at his partner with a faint frown. Had Wufei figured it out? Unsure of how to take that, Duo opted to keep his mouth shut. A moment later, as if sensing the eyes upon him, Wufei looked up. Those hawk-like black eyes narrowed a little, and a chill ran down Duo's back. It abated the second that Wufei's eyes cut back to the flight board and the boy began to speak again, "We're being led around. The evidence lines up too well."

"Yeah, I know," Duo shrugged easily. He closed his eyes again just as he felt Wufei's try to penetrate his skull once more. An easy smile formed on his lips, "It's pretty obvious. But it's equally obvious that we're not coming up with anything else… so as long as we _know_ it's a trap."

"Better an enemy you know," Wufei quoted lightly.

"Bingo," Duo twittered in response. There was a tug at his elbow, which was gone by the time he'd opened his eyes. Wufei was already walking away, and on the flight board, their shuttle had just been announced.

++//\\++

Planning a getaway with one incapacitated person was proving to be just as hard as sounded. Quatre frowned down into the bottom-lit pool and swung his legs slowly back and forth in the water. The summer bugs buzzed beyond the back patio area, yet the torches that Heero had set out along the perimeter seemed to be keeping them away from the small group gathered there. Though he and Relena had continued to ignore their captors as politely as they could, neither had they been left on their own since they'd come out of the bedroom.

Some small, perverse part of him was happy about that. So long as they were under observation, then Heero and Trowa were worried that they would be able to escape. The down side to this belief in their abilities was that they'd been given no chance to _try_.

Leaning back onto the palms of his hands, Quatre tipped his head up and was surprised by the brightness of the stars. The only light outside came from the pool, the torches, and the brilliant moon above. As he watched, he counted seven tell-tale streaks of shuttles dropping back into the atmosphere, or leaving it. He should have been on one of those flights…

A splash at the other end of the pool followed by droplets raining down on Quatre's face. He startled, and his eyes jerked to the water where a long, lean form was now skimming across the bottom of the pool. The water lapped a little higher against his legs before it settled from the dive that had been taken into it—Quatre couldn't find it in himself to care.

_"I was hoping he'd still be in that outfit—or a towel."_ The phantom memory of Duo's words only a few days earlier ghosted across his mind as he watched Trowa rise towards the surface of the water. The boy broke through and shook his head, long bangs flying every which way before sticking to his face. Trowa lifted a single hand, the other helping him to tread the water, and pushed his hair from his eyes. Green eyes caught blue for a single moment before Quatre jerked his attention away.

Cheeks heated and heart ill, Quatre climbed to his feet.

Relena had been laying quietly in one of the deck chairs since they'd retired outdoors after dinner. She turned her head when Quatre approached her, a slight frown crossing her lips. "Quatre, you ok?"

He offered her a smile and took the chair next to hers. He'd put a towel at the end of it earlier and took it up now to dry off his feet. "Yeah," he lied, "Just thought my feet were starting to prune."

"I didn't realize you had so much of an ego," the girl teased in response. A splash from the pool caught both of their attention, and they looked in time to see Trowa disappear under again. "I envy you."

"Huh?"

"I haven't been swimming in ages," Relena explained in a whisper. Quatre frowned at her tone of voice, but the reason behind the quiet confession moved from the shadows of the patio doorway, then. Heero passed by them, showing no signs of having heard the exchange, and headed towards the pool himself. He pulled his shirt off over his head, leaving only a bright coloured pair of swimming trunks on his person, before he joined Trowa in the water.

"I don't think it'd hurt your leg too much," Quatre replied thoughtfully. He tried to turn his eyes from the swimming pool, but Heero had started to do laps around it. He muttered a second later, "I bet he doesn't know a single pool game."

"Probably not," Relena agreed. She sat up, her shadowed form moving in Quatre's peripheral vision. "I don't have a swim suit. I've been making do with what he had to provide."

"Oh," Quatre blinked. After a moment his cheeks coloured again as his thoughts wandered down the list of items that men and women couldn't share. Or at least, weren't supposed to—had Heero thought to provide that? Try as he might, he couldn't force himself to ask.

"You could just wear a t-shirt and uh…"

"I could, if there's one dark enough," Relena replied with an easy shrug, "I hadn't thought about it. A pair of shorts… but I also don't know if there's any way to clean them."

"We'll have to ask Heero," Quatre nodded absently. A splash from the pool, and Trowa was pulling himself out of the water, muscles glistening with water and starshine…

"Fluff ball?"

Quatre startled again at the touch of Relena's hand on his shoulder. Her left brow shot up in a silent question, her eyes glancing to toward the pool to see what had had him so enamored. With a blush, Quatre realized that she'd asked him something several times already. "What was that, Relena?"

"I said," the girl replied lightly, "that we might not ask him at all. We could just… go looking."

The meaning of that sank home after a moment. Quatre nodded in agreement and watched as Relena scooted back into her lounge chair. She returned to watching the stars, and after a moment, he joined her. How were they supposed to do that if the others were always watching?

++//\\++

Commercial flights were the worst way to travel, Duo decided as he stared out the window into the familiar star field of space. He let his head roll back on the top of his seat. His arms and legs ached, signaling yet another growth spurt he was ready to go through… He hoped it would stop soon. Absently rubbing one arm, the boy lulled his head towards the inside of the cabin. Beside him Wufei was sleeping again—a senseless pang of envy shot through Duo's system and he pouted just a little. Across the aisle from Wufei, a man was staring at him.

Catching the man's eye, Duo lifted a brow and stopped blinking. Slowly unnerved by this display, the man eventually turned his face away and coughed into a fist. Duo snorted faintly and let his attention return to his partner. Wufei didn't look all that bad asleep, Duo had to admit. It wasn't the first time that he'd noticed this, not by a long shot, but Duo couldn't help but smile for it now.

Yet he also couldn't help but remember the conversation he'd overheard just a day before. Though he'd realized that Wufei had had some problems with the partnership, he'd always assumed it had more to do with Wufei's loner tendencies. The spark of pride hidden within deep him replied that it still had a lot to do with that. Probably, anyway.

Duo rolled his head back the other direction, once again staring off into space. He wondered if he'd ever get the chance to pilot something again, even if it was just a dinky little shuttle.

A faint pinging noise erupted from his back pocket, and Duo jumped.

Grinning at his own idiocy, he shifted towards Wufei in order to retrieve it. He bumped against the other man and went still, fearing he'd woken him. Much to Duo's surprise, Wufei didn't seem to even notice. He settled down in the seat again, phone retrieved, and his eyes widened as the other boy moved with him.

Wufei's head was resting against his shoulder.

On one hand, Duo was perfectly aware of how hilarious this was—Wufei the great warrior, the war hero, the highly-trained-soldier, didn't even realized he'd been bumped into in his sleep, and at the same time he was utterly terrified that the boy would wake up. That same spark of pride interrupted his impending freak out to point out that he'd done nothing wrong, and Wufei, at least after he calmed down, did tend to see reason. Duo wondered exactly which person that spark had been watching for the past few years, but accepted it with a mental shrug and pressed the button to silence the incessant beeping of his phone.

There was a movement in the corner of his vision, and Duo turned his head just in time to see that man staring at them again. Duo stuck his tongue out at him.

The man properly dealt with, he flipped his phone open and took a look at the message waiting him.

_'So were you ever going to call me back, or should I start planning the funeral?_' In his head, Duo could imagine Hilde's exact candor in that message. He smirked and pressed the reply button.

'_Is that a threat? I could have you arrested for that._'

He snapped his phone shut and shifted a little to get comfortable with Wufei's weight resting heavily against his side. Though he half expected the boy to wake at any moment, Wufei never did, and Duo allowed himself to relax a little more. _It wasn't so bad_, he thought, _the human contact_. It'd been awhile since he'd had any of that.

The phone beeped again, and with how close Duo was to the Chinese ex-pilot, he could feel the faint, annoyed stir at the sound. Against his better judgment, Duo took the opportunity to put his phone on silent mode. That done, he opened the next message.

'_No threat—I follow through on _my _promises. Seriously, though, I saw the news. You ok?_'

Duo scoffed lightly and sighed. Quickly he typed back, '_Yeah I'm fine. Can't talk about it, though._'

The reply was quick enough that Duo could imagine Hilde where she was right now: sitting in her studio with a cup of some foul-smelling tea, curled into the huge wicker basket chair she kept there, phone on her knee, and Mozart playing in the background. She always did that when she was upset. '_Understood. You've been sleeping, right?'_

'_I wish you'd stop asking me about that.'_

"Maxwell," a sharp voice cut into Duo's scowl, and the braided boy jumped for the second time that hour. Wufei winced, one hand rising to rub where Duo's shoulder had collided with his forehead, and he sat up. Behind Wufei, Duo noticed that man looking at them _again_. He wanted to say something, but Wufei's glare stopped him short.

"Duo," he reminded his partner, who was still glaring at him from beneath the faint bruise that was beginning to form over his right eyebrow.

Wufei's eyes closed for a long moment, the expression upon his face strained. Duo watched the other boy's jaw twitch a few times, as if biting back a few choice words. And then, as if by some grand miracle, Wufei opened his eyes and mouth and _didn't_ shout at him. "How long till we land?"

"Uh… An hour or two more, I think." Duo glanced at his phone and realized he had another message waiting for him. Suddenly he didn't feel quite so social. He leaned up again to shove his phone back into his pocket as Wufei got up. "Where you going?"

"Bathroom," the Chinese boy snapped, and headed through the curtain into the stewards' area.

++//\\++

Heero watched as Quatre carried Relena up the stairs later that night, the girl wrapped around his back like a backpack. When Trowa had first shown up with Quatre he'd thought that all the progress he'd made with Relena had been undone—yet the longer the day went on, the less certain he was that that was true. She was relaxed, again, and smiling more often when she thought there was no one watching her. Perhaps his mission wasn't going as badly as he'd feared.

Footsteps stopped behind him, and Heero turned his head enough to acknowledge the other boy. Trowa stepped forward only after Heero had done this; he moved into the line of Heero's peripheral vision and stopped again. From Trowa's stance, Heero guessed that the boy was watching the other pair disappear into the second story of the building.

Once they were out of sight, Heero headed down the hallway towards the security office. The quiet footsteps followed him.

"I'm not certain that leaving them unmonitored is wise," Trowa echoed his own thoughts when they'd reached the office door. Heero dialed in his access code and waited for the click from the other side. As soon as it sounded, he pressed on the door, and they both entered the small room. It was filled with a consol and monitors displaying various areas of the hotel and surrounding carnival. Heero sat in the one chair present and moved to the keyboard as he prepared to go over all that day's specs for the outside park. Though he'd not been alerted to anything out of the ordinary, he never trusted machinery to do everything for him.

"Probably not," Heero agreed.

"But we're going to?"

After a moment, the brunette nodded. Trowa seemed to take this as an order, and he did as well. After another moment, the taller boy turned and left Heero to his equipment.

++//\\++

The motel room in Brussels was almost identical to the one they'd shared on L4-RS01. The colour scheme had changed, but the set up was the same: two beds, a beaten up tv, a bible stuffed in the shared night stand, and an equally dubious bathroom. Yet for the standard shab the place was bathed in, Wufei had to give it credit for being appropriately clean.

From the bathroom sink, he cupped cold water into his hands and splashed it over his face, letting himself revel for a moment in the chill. Looking up into the bathroom mirror, the boy stared at his reflection for a long moment and imagined instead that he saw Maxwell instead. Why hadn't he noticed the bags under the boy's eyes?

This wasn't the first time that he'd witnessed Duo going without sleep, he'd realized only moments after having caught the text message exchange. True, it was hard to discern, as Duo's bouncy personality and lively manner belied it, but now that he knew what to look for Wufei knew he'd had many conversations with Duo over the past couple of months where his partner had looked… worse for the wear.

For some reason this troubled him. That it was a liability was no small part of it, Wufei knew. Duo was able to handle himself in a pinch—no matter how incompetent the boy was when it came to desk work, but how reliable was that ability when he was functioning below maximum capacity?

Wufei gingerly touched the bruise still showing above his eyebrow and bit his bottom lip as he thought. Was it really such a problem? Though they hadn't yet spoken about what had happened on the shuttle, what Wufei may or may not have seen, Wufei didn't think that this silence would last long. Not where Maxwell was concerned, at least. Surely the other boy's sleeping issues were his none of his concern, and it looked as if Duo already had someone nagging him about it.

The scene from the night before came back to haunt him once again, as it had done several times since he'd woken from his nap. Duo had a hard time sleeping…

Out in the bedroom, a phone rang. It got to its second repetition before it was cut short, and he could faintly hear Duo speaking to someone on the other end of the line. A moment later there was a rap at the bathroom door. "Yo, dude… that was Dorothy's secretary. They're bumping up our meeting."

Wufei snorted and reached for a wash cloth to dry his face off with. Thankful for the reminder that they had more to worry about than inter-personal relationships, Wufei returned the cloth to the counter and headed out the door to meet his partner. They had work to do.

++//\\++

Even standing outside the door Duo could hear the door bell echo inside. He gave a low, appreciative whisper as he took a step away from the entrance to look up at the walls towering above them. "Don't this just beat all?" he breathed. Wufei gave him an odd look and snorted.

"It isn't as if you've never been to a castle before."

"Maybe not, but it's the first time I've been to this castle," Duo replied with a smirk. Wufei once again graced him with an unreadable look which sent up the hairs on the back of Duo's neck. He smiled a little more in the boy's direction, but was only rewarded with silence.

The door opened, and it didn't dispel the awkward, though Duo gave it points for trying. "Mr. Chang and Mr. Maxwell, I'd presume?" A woman in a sharp black business suit asked. Her smile was laced with arsenic, and her tone managed to turn the words into their proper meaning: "Great. Now I have to disinfect the porch."

"_Agents_," Wufei replied. "This isn't a personal call."

The woman's lips tightened noticeably though her voice remained calm. Duo wondered if she realized just how bad she was at acting; for once he didn't think Wufei unjustified at all, though he couldn't place his finger on why. "Of course. The Duchess is waiting. Follow me, please."

Bitchy-Mc-Snot-Nose, as Duo now dubbed her, turned from the door to clip-clap her way into the mausoleum of a 'home.' Wufei and Duo followed at a more sedate pace, the latter taking a moment to shove the heavy oak door back into place. The inside was a veritable labyrinth of decadence: silver candelabra lined the halls as if electricity was a concept of science fiction, Persian rugs lined the middle of the long hallways, and paintings, which Duo guessed were originals—each and every one, covered every inch of available wall space. Though he'd only met her a handful of times, Duo thought that this suited Dorothy's style very well. Or, to be a little more kind, it suited the kind of lifestyle to which she'd been born. He didn't have much taste for either, but that was neither here nor there.

Instead he watched Bitchy-Mc-Snot-Nose as she shook her bony bottom down several long hallways, a handful of rather random stairs, and through a pair of glass doors into the back of the castle.

Dorothy was sitting at a lone table placed on the far end of the "patio," which, in Duo's opinion, was far too big for any practical use. Formal events, the size of which only royalty could throw, were held here, he supposed. That was what movies had taught him, and in this case, he judged that they were right. As much as the decorating seemed to be her style, so too did the idea that Dorothy would use such a place for small, private meetings.

Though his lips quirked at the imagined irony, Duo found he could appreciate the single practical appeal of such a venue: here they wouldn't be readily spied on. Whatever Dorothy had to tell them, they didn't care for untrustworthy ears to hear it.

"Gentlemen," Dorothy smiled, the steaming mug of tea she held paused before her lips. She took her first sip then, and sighed with gratitude. One imperious hand waved at the spread on the table before her. Duo's eyes immediately flew to the cookies. "Please, join me. I'm so glad you could make it."

"Funny," Wufei replied in his most bored voice. Duo glanced at the boy to assure himself that the glare written upon Wufei's features wasn't directed at him. It wasn't, so Duo fell into a chair and snatched up a butter cookie before the offer could be retracted. "I thought you were trying to avoid us."

"Now why would you have thought that?" Dorothy continued—it had to be the worst display of feigned innocence Duo had ever seen. Wufei took the remaining seat, placed diagonally from both Duo and Dorothy, and his brow twitched in irritation.

With the understanding that he was in for a bit of a show, Duo helped himself to a cup of tea and a heaping stack of cookies. Rich people had the best shit.

"That was a rather sudden time change, Dorothy," Wufei paused to snort as he caught sight of what his partner was doing. He picked his sentence up right away, "As if you expected us not to make it."

"And yet here I am waiting on you," She smiled like a cobra, "With snacks, even."

"I suppose you made them yourself."

Dorothy's lips froze in her smile, and she pried them apart only to sip at her tea. When they'd defrosted, she put her cup down and leaned back in her seat. Her gaze settled on Wufei and Duo munched happily away—forgotten, and glad of it.

"You wished to discuss Relena's disappearance with me," Dorothy stated. Duo began to nod when he noticed Wufei's eyes narrow. Though surprised by this, Duo stifled his motion and shoved another cookie into his mouth.

The woman's lips quirked into a much more genuine—Duo thought—smile, and to her credit, she only snickered once. Faintly, at that. "It wasn't that difficult to figure out."

Wufei snorted and poured himself some tea. "What I haven't figured out," Dorothy continued, her eyes upon her tea cup, "Is why you're here to see me and not my husband."

Only years of experience kept Duo from tensing in surprise; he noticed Wufei's hand twitch at the same time. Then it passed as rage burned from his partner's eyes. "I believe you just answered your own question."

Dorothy's snake-like smile once again struck the Chinese agent, and—Duo had to hand it to her—she was good at getting Wufei riled up. A sudden, hard lump formed in his stomach and faded just as quickly. He swallowed thickly around his last cookie and settled back in his seat. "Self incrimination isn't going to help your case in this, Dorothy," Duo interjected before the two could start a shouting match. "Unless you'd like to make a formal statement?"

"Why should I do that?" The woman countered. Her eyes darted to Duo's, as if surprised to still see him there. That didn't bother him in the least, and he felt the beginnings of a smirk twitching at his lips, "You have no evidence against me, and I have done nothing I'm ashamed of. Follow your clues more carefully, and you might actually get somewhere."

One of Duo's eyebrows rose, "You want your husband investigated?"

"We're not your private police force," Wufei hissed at the same time.

"I never claimed that," Dorothy replied as she once again took up her tea. The woman sipped it slowly, eyes closing as she did. Though she put the tea to rest, her eyes did not open, "I am merely _suggesting_ that you pay more attention to the path you're being led down. And yes, you are being led."

Wufei snorted again, arms crossing tightly about his chest, and Duo gave his partner a wary glance. The Chinese boy's jaw was twitching, and his lips set into a scowl. "We know," Duo replied, "This could go a lot more easily if you'd just tell us—"

"I shant," the woman snapped. Her eyes locked with Duo's, and he felt his own jaw tighten.

"Alright," he nodded, "As you wish." Standing up, the braided boy shoved his hands into his pockets and jerked a nod at their hostess.

"Thanks for the cookies."

"Anytime," She muttered. Duo's eyes settled for a moment upon the way her fingers curled tight about her porcelain cup, the faint lines around her eyes. She was so young to look so old.

He reached out and tugged Wufei's sleeve to get his attention. Wufei nodded to him, ignoring Dorothy completely as they turned to leave the way they'd come.

Duo fished the keys out of Wufei's pocket before they'd left the castle—a fact which Wufei didn't realized until they'd gotten to the car they'd rented for the duration of their stay. Rather than argue about it, which was a miracle in and of itself by Duo's standards, Wufei merely climbed into the passenger seat and allowed Duo to take the wheel.

In a few moments they were heading back along the ridiculously long driveway, each apparently lost in his own thoughts.

One hand on the wheel, Duo let himself lean casually back into the seat of the tiny European model that passed for a car on that side of the planet. It was cute, he thought rather pointlessly, sort of like a bug. A bug that he could have stepped on without ever being the wiser, back when he was piloting Deathscythe.

A frown crossed his lips—why had that thought come up?

He shook his head to clear it just as Wufei spoke up, "This is ridiculous."

"A bit, yeah," Duo agreed.

Another few moments of silence passed. They reached the front gate, and the guard there let them pass without questioning. _Of course he did_, Duo mused; _it wasn't his job to keep people_ in.

"So I guess we go after the Duke properly?" Duo asked. He thought he could hear Wufei's teeth grinding.

"I don't like being led about like a sheep." Wufei growled. Anyone else would have been drumming their fingers or tapping their foot, but Wufei did neither; he just crossed his arms a little tighter and frowned out the window. Duo rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the road.

"And I enjoy it?"

"You are a Christian, are you not?"

Duo's hand clenched, causing the steering wheel to give a squeak of protest. Wufei's eyes widened a little when Duo swerved through a lane of traffic to pull over to the side of the highway. Without taking his eyes from the front of the car, Duo put the car into park and killed the engine. Only then did he round on Wufei.

"What the fuck is your problem with me, anyway?"

The Chinese boy lifted a hand to one temple, rubbing slow circles upon it. "The comment about your religion was inappropriate, I admit. I apolo—"

"Fuck 'my' religion," Duo spat, "I'm not a Christian, which you'd damn well know if you bothered to pay attention for two seconds. I want to know what your fucking problem is with _me_."

Cold black eyes locked with his, and the two stared at one another for a long moment as cars whizzed past on the freeway beside them. Each one shook the car a little, but neither seemed to notice. That tick in Wufei's jaw continued its work more fervently than before, like a living creature trying to get free.

"You never do your paperwork," Wufei finally said in the flat-even tones which indicated his most pissy of moments. Any other day and Duo might have been scared. "You're loud and uncouth, and don't seem to take your job with any sense of pride or dignity. While you're obviously smart, you pretend to be an idiot—and I don't know why. You gain nothing from this foolish little mask you wear! We're being drug around like dogs on a leash, and you could at least give a shit about it."

"Well if that's all it is…" the words flew from his mouth before he'd even had a chance to think them. Duo ate the rest of that sentence as Wufei's jaw twitched once more and the boy's hand clenched into a fist.

Duo threw his hands up in defense and blurted: "I can't read, okay?"

An incredulous silence fell into place. Duo peeked one eye open to see Wufei staring at him with accusation in his eyes. "Well I mean I _can_," Duo clarified and swallowed a lump in his throat, "Just… just not really… well. Not like you can."

Wufei rolled his eyes, and it was Duo's turn to clench a fist. He fell back into his seat, staring out the windshield and pouted. "We both know it, okay? You're smarter than I am. I can't read those stupid reports—I try, but it takes forever. I have to look up every other word in a dictionary, and then ten to twenty _more_ words, just to understand the first definition! It's stupid. I'm a better fighter, okay?"

"Why didn't you just tell me that to begin with?" Wufei frowned.

"Would you want to let someone know about that?" Duo muttered. As much as he hated himself for it, he glanced at the other boy only to find Wufei still staring at him. The accusation was gone, as was the jaw twitch, but they had been replaced by something which Duo couldn't define. Something that made his spine crawl.

"We have a job to do, yeah?" He chuckled humorlessly and turned the key in the ignition. The little bug hummed to life once again, and Duo guided it back onto the roadway like the expert that he was. At least in this he was unmatched, and they both knew it.

++//\\++

In the first drowsy moments of consciousness, Relena wasn't certain where she was or what was going on. The only thought that registered was "Oh bother, not again." It was with reluctance that Relena opened her eyes and took a good look about the foreign room she'd fallen asleep in. The sight of a familiar blonde head was a welcome one, though she did wonder what Quatre was doing digging about in the closet.

"Good morning," he said, without looking up.

Relena sat up and winced when she moved her ankle. She shifted about until she found a comfortable position and stretched her back out with a pop. A yawn and scratch of her sleep-knotted hair later, and the girl leaned forward to pull up the cuff of her pajama pants so that she could get a good look at her ankle. The swelling had gone down, but there was still a large yellow-green mark across it.

"I didn't mean to wake you," Quatre continued from the closet. He was mostly inside of it now, with an impressive collection of junk put out into the room in a semi-circle about the door. "I couldn't sleep anymore."

"Well you did have a rather long nap on the way here," Relena replied with another yawn. She gave the fleshy swelling of her ankle a tentative poke and winced at its reply. The silence from the closet grew louder, and what she said caught up with her. She winced, "Quatre, I'm sorry. I forget I've had more time to adjust…"

"We're both off our game," his voice drifted back in the same, light tone he used for polite company. Then he peeked around the doorway and threw a smile at her. It was gone in an instant and he was back to tunneling his way through the remains of decades past, "there's no reason to apologize. On your part, at any rate."

Relena nodded with some reluctance. When Quatre seemed content to leave it at that, Relena let her concentration rest upon finding a way out of the king-sized bed without jarring her ankle too much. It was difficult, but she managed.

One bathroom break later, Relena had twisted her hair into a much more manageable braid, and Quatre had made a discovery in the closet.

"It looks as if Heero wasn't quite as thorough with his cleaning as he might have thought," Quatre announced and held aloft an ancient key ring. The ring itself was covered in rust, and there were spider webs sticking to the whole lot of it. But the keys still seemed to be useable—or, at least, they were in better shape than their holder. There was a plastic tag clipped in among them, and Relena squinted as it as she took the item.

"There's something wrong with that statement in and of itself," Relena muttered. With a sigh she read aloud, "A-3 215."

Quatre nodded to both, crossing his arms over his nude chest. "Yep," he agreed brightly, "But either way, I'm curious."

"Same," Relena nodded. She dropped her attention from the keys and threw a wary glance toward the bedroom door, "Are they still watching us?"

He followed her gaze with a frown. His lips twitched back into a smile before he thought she'd noticed, and Relena decided not to say anything. "No. They didn't last night, from what I could tell, and I haven't heard from them yet this morning. I even went down to the kitchen earlier. There's no sign."

"I see." Relena frowned a little and then shook her head. "Well. This doesn't seem like a hotel key. Let's get some breakfast. I need a shower, and if they're still leaving us alone, we can try and figure out where Mr. Yuy is leading us off too."

"And poke about for some swimwear," He reminded her as he offered her his arm.

"And poke about for some swimwear," Relena agreed with a laugh as she accepted it.

++//\\++

**A/N: Thank you to everyone who has commented thus far, and a hug to my two editors for this chapter: Loki and Ami 3**


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